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THE WOMEN 
OF THE C.ESARS 




ng by Andr6 Castaigue 



LIVIA, THE WIFE OF AUGUSTUS, SUPERINTENDING THE 
WEAVING OF ROBES FOR HER FAMILY 



THE WOMEN 
OF THE CiESARS 



BY 



GUGLIELMO FERRERO 




NEW YORK 

THE CENTURA CO. 

MCMXI 



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Copyright, 1911, by 
The Century Co. 

Published, October, 1911 



TheDeVinne Press 



©CI.A297756 




CONTENTS 

I Woman and Marriage in Ancient 
Rome .......... 3 



II LiviA and Julia 



46 



III The Daughters of Agrippa 



. 96 



IV Tiberius and Agrippina 152 

V The Sisters of Caligula and the 

Marriage of Messalina . . . .212 



VI Agrippina, the Mother of Nero . . 276 




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Livia, the Wife of Augustus, Superintending the 
Weaving of Robes for her Family Frontispiece 

PAGE 

A Roman Marriage Custom 8 

Eumachia, a Pubhc Priestess of Ancient Rome 13 

The Forum under the Caesars 22 

The So-called Bust of Cicero 28 

Julius Caesar 37 

The Sister of M. Nonius Balbus 43 

Livia, the Mother of Tiberius, in the Costume 
of a Priestess 49 

The Young Augustus 60 

The Emperor Augustus 66 

A Silver Denarius of the Second Triumvirate 71 

Silver Coin Bearing the Head of Julius Caesar 71 

The Great Paris Cameo 82 

vii 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 



eta via, the Sister of Augustus 87 

A Reception at Livia's Villa . 94 

Mark Antony 103 

Antony and Cleopatra 110 

Tiberius, Elder Son of Livia and Stepson of ^ 

Augustus 115 

Drusus, the Younger Brother of Tiberius . . 126 

Statue of a Young Roman Woman . . . . . 131 

A Roman Girl of the Time of the Caesars . . 138 

Costumes of Roman Men, Women, and Chil- . 

dren in the Procession of a Peace Festival . 147 

Bust of Tiberius in the Museo Nazionale, 

Naples 154 

Types of Head-dresses Worn in the Time of , 

the Women of the Caesars 159 

A Roman Feast in the Time of the Caesars . . 170 

Depositing the Ashes of a Member of the Im- 
perial Family in a Roman Columbarium . 175 

The Starving Livilla Refusing Food .... 181 

Costume of a Chief Vestal (Virgo Vestalis 

Maxima) 192 

Remains of the House of the Vestal Virgins . 198 

viii 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Bust, Supposed to be of Antonia, Daughter 
of Mark Antony and Octavia, and Mother of 
Germanicus, in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence 203 

Caligula 214 

A Bronze Sestertius (Slightly Enlarged), 
Showing the Sisters of Caligula (Agrip- 
pina, Drusilla, and Julia Livilla) on One 
Side and Germanicus on the Other Side . 219 '^ 

A Bronze Sestertius with the Head of Agrip- 
pina the Elder, Daughter of Agrippa and 
Julia, the Daughter of Augustus 219 

Claudius, Messalina, and Their Two Children 
in What is Known as the "Hague Cameo" . 225 

Remains of the Bridge of Caligula in the 

Palace of the Caesars 236 

The Emperor Caligula 242 "^ 

Claudius 247 

The Emperor Claudius 258 

Messalina, Third Wife of Claudius .... 263 

The Philosopher Seneca 269 

The Emperor Nero 280 " 

Agrippina the Younger, Sister of Caligula and 
Mother of Nero 286 

Britannicus 291 

ix 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Statue of Agrippina the Younger, in the Capi- / 
toline Museum, Rome 302 

Agrippina the Younger 307 

/ 

The Emperor Nero 314 

^/ 

The Death of Agrippina 323 



THE WOMEN OF THE C.ESARS 



THE 

WOMEN OF THE C.ESARS 

I 

WOMAN AND MARRIAGE IN ANCIENT ROME 

*TY yTANY things that among the Greeks are con- 
IV A sidered improper and unfitting," wrote 
Cornelius Nepos in the preface to his "Lives," 
"are permitted by our customs. Is there by 
chance a Roman who is ashamed to take his 
wife to a dinner away from home? Does it 
happen that the mistress of the house in any 
family does not enter the anterooms fre- 
quented by strangers and show herself among 
them? Not so in Greece: there the woman ac- 
cepts invitations only among families to which 
she is related, and she remains withdrawn in 
that inner part of the house which is called the 
gynaeceum, where only the nearest relatives 
are admitted." 
This passage, one of the most significant in 

3 



THE WOMEN OF THE C.ESARS 

all the little work of Nepos, draws in a few, 
clear, telling strokes one of the most marked 
distinctions between the Greco-Asiatic world 
and the Roman. Among ancient societies, the 
Roman was probably that in which, at least 
among the better classes, woman enjoyed the 
greatest social liberty and the greatest legal and 
economic autonomy. There she most nearly 
approached that condition of moral and civil 
equality with man which makes her his com- 
rade, and not his slave^ — that equality in which 
modern civilization sees one of the supreme 
ends of moral progress. 

The doctrine held by some philosophers and 
sociologists, that military peoples subordinate 
woman to a tyrannical regime of domestic ser- 
vitude, is wholly disproved by the history of 
Rome. If there was ever a time when the 
Roman woman lived in a state of perennial 
tutelage, under the authority of man from 
birth to death — of the husband, if not of the 
father, or, if not of father or husband, of the 
guardian — that time belongs to remote an- 
tiquity. 

4 



MARRIAGE IN ANCIENT ROME 

When Rome became the master state of the 
Mediterranean world, and especially during 
the last century of the republic, woman, aside 
from a few slight limitations of form rather 
than of substance, had already acquired legal 
and economic independence, the condition, 
necessary for social and moral equality. As to 
marriage, the affianced pair could at that time 
choose between two different legal family re- 
gimes: marriage with manus, the older form, 
in which all the goods of the wife passed to the 
ownership of the husband, so that she could no 
longer possess anything in her own name; or 
marriage without manus, in which only the 
dower became the property of the husband, 
and the wife remained mistress of all her other 
belongings and all that she might acquire. Ex- 
cept in some cases, and for special reasons, in 
all the families of the aristocracy, by common 
consent, marriages, during the last centuries of 
the republic, were contracted in the later form; 
so that at that time married women directly 
and openly had gained economic indepen- 
dence. 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 



During the same period, indirectly, and by 
means of juridical evasions, this independence 
was also won by unmarried women, who, ac- 
cording to ancient laws, ought to have re- 
mained all their lives under a guardian, either 
selected by the father in his will or appointed 
by the law in default of such selection. To get 
around this difficulty, the fertile and subtle 
imagination of the jurists invented first the 
tutor optivus, permitting the father, instead of 
naming his daughter's guardian in his will, to 
leave her free to choose one general guardian 
or several, according to the business in hand, 
or even to change that ofiicial as many times 
as she wished. 

To give the woman means to change her 
legitimate guardian at pleasure, if her father 
had provided none by will, there was invented 
the tutor cessicius, thereby allowing the trans- 
mission of a legal guardianship. However, 
though all restrictions imposed upon the lib- 
erty of the unmarried woman by the institu- 
tion of tutelage disappeared, one limitation 
continued in force — she could not make a will. 

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From a drawing" by Andr6 Castaigne 

A ROMAN MARRIAGE CUSTOM 

The picture shows the bride entering her new home in the arms of the bridegroom 



MARRIAGE IN ANCIENT ROME 

Yet even this was provided for, either by fic- 
titious marriage or by the invention of the 
tutor fiduciarius. The v^oman, without con- 
tracting matrimony, gave herself by coemptio 
(purchase) into the manus of a person of her 
trust, on the agreement that the coemptionator 
would free her: he became her guardian in the 
eyes of the law. 

There was, then, at the close of the republic 
little disparity in legal condition between the 
man and the woman. As is natural, to this al- 
most complete legal equality there was united 
an analogous moral and social equality. The 
Romans never had the idea that between the 
mundus muliehris (woman's world) and that 
of men they must raise walls, dig ditches, put 
up barricades, either material or moral. They 
never willed, for example, to divide women 
from men by placing between them the ditch 
of ignorance. To be sure, the Roman dames of 
high society were for a long time little in- 
structed, but this was because, moreover, the 
men distrusted Greek culture. When litera- 
ture, science, and Hellenic philosophy were 

9 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

admitted into the great Roman families as de- 
sired and welcome guests, neither the author- 
ity, nor the egoism, nor yet the prejudices of 
the men, sought to deprive women of the joy, 
the comfort, the light, that might come to them 
from these new studies. We know that many 
ladies in the last two centuries of the republic 
not only learned to dance and to sing,-— 
common feminine studies, these, — ^but even 
learned Greek, loved literature, and dabbled 
in philosophy, reading its books or meet- 
ing with the famous philosophers of the 
Orient. 

Moreover, in the home the woman was mis- 
tress, at the side of and on equality with her 
husband. The passage I have quoted from 
Nepos proves that she was not segregated, like 
the Greek woman: she received and enjoyed 
the friends of her husband, was present with 
them at festivals and banquets in the houses of 
families with whom she had friendly relations, 
although at such banquets she might not, like 
the man, recline, but must, for the sake of 
greater modesty, sit at table. In short, she was 

10 



MARRIAGE IN ANCIENT ROME 

not, like the Greek woman, shut up at home, a 
veritable prisoner. 

She might go out freely; this she did generally 
in a litter. She was never excluded from thea- 
ters, even though the Roman government tried 
as best it could for a long period to temper in 
its people the passion for spectacular enter- 
tainments. She could frequent public places 
and have recourse directly to the magistrates. 
We have record of the assembling and of dem- 
onstrations made by the richest women of 
Rome in the Forum and other public places, 
to obtain laws and other provisions from 
the magistrates, like that famous demonstra- 
tion of women that Livy describes as hav- 
ing occurred in the year 195 b.c, to secure 
the abolition of the Oppian Law against lux- 
ury. 

What more? We have good reason for hold- 
ing that already under the republic there ex- 
isted at Rome a kind of woman's club, which 
called itself conventus matronarum and gath- 
ered together the dames of the great families. 
Finally, it is certain that many times in critical 

11 



THE WOMEN OF THE C.ESARS 

moments the government turned directly and 
officially to the great ladies of Rome for help to 
overcome the dangers that menaced public af- 
fairs, by collecting money, or imploring with 
solemn religious ceremonies the favor of the 
gods. 

One understands then, how at all times there 
were at Rome women much interested in pub- 
lic affairs. The fortunes of the powerful fam- 
ilies, their glory, their dominance, their wealth, 
depended on the vicissitudes of politics and of 
war. The heads of these families were all 
statesmen, diplomats, warriors; the more in- 
telligent and cultivated the wife, and the 
fonder she was of her husband, the intenser 
the absorption with which she must have fol- 
lowed the fortunes of politics, domestic and 
foreign; for with these were bound up many 
family interests, and often even the life of her 
husband. 

Was the Roman family, then, the reader will 
demand at this point, in everything like the 
family of contemporary civilization? Have 

12 




From the statue found at Pompeii. Now in the Museo Nazionale, Naples 

EUMACHIA, A PUBLIC PRIESTESS OF ANCIENT ROME 



MARRIAGE IN ANCIENT ROME 

we returned upon the long trail to the point 
reached by our far-away forebears? 

No. If there are resemblances between the 
modern family and the Roman, there are also 
crucial differences. Although the Roman was 
disposed to allow woman judicial and eco- 
nomic independence, a refined culture, and 
that freedom without which it is impossible to 
enjoy life in dignified and noble fashion, he 
was never ready to recognize in the way mod- 
ern civilization does more or less openly, as 
ultimate end and reason for marriage, either 
the personal happiness of the contracting par- 
ties or their common personal moral develop- 
ment in the unifying of their characters and 
aspirations. The individualistic conception of 
matrimony and of the family attained by our 
civilization was alien to the Roman mind, 
which conceived of these from an essentially 
political and social point of view. The purpose 
of marriage was, so to speak, exterior to the 
pair. As untouched by any spark of the meta- 
physical spirit as he was unyielding — at least 
in action — to every suggestion of the philo- 

15 



THE WOMEN OF THE C.ESARS 

sophic; preoccupied only in enlarging and 
consolidating the state of which he was master, 
the Roman aristocrat never regarded matri- 
mony and the family, just as he never regarded 
religion and law, as other than instruments for 
political domination, as means for increasing 
and establishing the power of every great 
family, and by family affiliations to strengthen 
the association of the aristocracy, already 
bound together by political interest. 

For this reason, although the Roman con- 
ceded many privileges and recognized many 
rights among women, he never went so far as 
to think that a woman of great family could 
aspire to the right of choosing her own hus- 
band. Custom, indeed, much restricted the 
young man also, at least in a first marriage. 
The choice rested with the fathers, who were 
accustomed to afQance their sons early, indeed 
when mere boys. The heads of two friendly 
families would find themselves daily to- 
gether in the struggle of the Forum and the 
Comitia, or in the deliberations of the Senate. 
Did the idea occur to both that their chil- 

16 



MARRIAGE IN ANCIENT ROME 

dren, if affianced then, at seven or eight years 
of age, might cement more closely the union 
of the two families, then straightway the 
matter was definitely arranged. The little girl 
was brought up with the idea that some day, as 
soon as might be, she should marry that boy, 
just as for two centuries in the famous houses 
of Catholic countries many of the daughters 
were brought up in the expectation that one 
day they should take the veil. 

Every one held this Roman practice as rea- 
sonable, useful, equitable; to no one did the 
idea occur that by it violence was done to the 
most intimate sentiment of liberty and inde- 
pendence that a human being can know. On 
the contrary, according to the common judg- 
ment, the well-governing of the state was being 
wisely provided for, and these alliances were 
destroying the seeds of discord that spon- 
taneously germinate in aristocracy and little 
by little destroy it, like those plants sown by no 
man's hand, which thrive upon old walls and 
become their ruin. 

This is why one knows of every famous 

17 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

Roman personage how many wives he had and 
of what family they were. The marriage of a 
Roman noble was a political act, and note- 
worthy; because a youth, or even a mature 
man, connecting himself with certain families, 
came to assume more or less fully the political 
responsibilities in which, for one cause or an- 
other, they were involved. This was particu- 
larly true in the last centuries of the republic, 
— that is, beginning from the Gracchi, — when 
for the various reasons which I have set forth 
in my "Greatness and Decline of Rome," the 
Roman aristocracy divided into two inimical 
parties, one of which attempted to rouse 
against the other the interests, the ambitions, 
and the cupidity, of the middle and lower 
classes. The two parties then sought to rein- 
force themselves by matrimonial alliances, 
and these followed the ups and downs of the 
political struggle that covered Rome with 
blood. Of this fact the story of Julius Caesar is 
a most curious proof. 

The prime reason for Julius Caesar's becom- 
ing the chief of the popular party is to be found 

18 



MARRIAGE IN ANCIENT ROME 

neither in his ambitions nor in his tempera- 
ment, and even less in his political opinions, 
but in his relationship to Marius. An aunt of 
Caesar had married Caius Marius, the modest 
bankrupt farmer of revenues, who, having en- 
tered politics, had become the first general of 
his time, had been elected consul six times, and 
had conquered Jugurtha, the Cimbri, and the 
Teutons. The self-made man had become 
famous and rich, and in the face of an aristoc- 
racy proud of its ancestors, had tried to en- 
noble his obscure origin by taking his wife 
from an ancient and most noble, albeit impov- 
erished and decayed, patrician family. 

But when there broke out the revolution in 
which Marius placed himself at the head of the 
popular party, and the revolution was over- 
come by Sulla, the old aristocracy, which had 
conquered with Sulla, did not forgive the pa- 
trician family of the Julii for having connected 
itself with that bitter foe, who had made so 
much mischief. Consequently, during the 
period of the reaction, all its members were 
looked upon askance, and were suspected and 

19 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

persecuted, among them young Caesar, who 
was in no way responsible for the deeds of his 
uncle, since he was only a lad during the war 
between Sulla and Marius. 

This explains how it was that the first wife 
of Caesar, Cossutia, was the daughter of a 
knight; that is, of a financier and revenue- 
farmer. For a young man belonging to a fam- 
ily of ancient senatorial nobility, this marriage 
was little short of a mesalliance; but Caesar had 
been engaged to this girl when still a very 
young man, at the time when, the alliance be- 
tween Marius and the knights being still firm 
and strong, the marriage of a rich knight's 
daughter would mean to the nephew of Marius, 
not only a considerable fortune, but also the 
support of the social class which at that mo- 
ment was predominant. For reasons unknown 
to us, Caesar soon repudiated Cossutia, and be- 
fore the downfall of the democratic party he 
was married to Cornelia, who was the daugh- 
ter of Cinna, the democratic consul and a most 
distinguished member of the party of Marius. 
This second marriage, the causes of which 

20 



I i 





/ ' 



/ ^ V 



MARRIAGE IN ANCIENT ROME 

must be sought for in the political status of 
Caesar's family, was the cause of his first po- 
litical reverses. For Sulla tried to force Cae- 
sar to repudiate Cornelia, and in consequence 
of his refusal, he came to be considered an 
enemy by Sulla and his party and was treated 
accordingly. 

It is known that Cornelia died when still very 
young, after only a few years of married life, 
and that Caesar's third marriage in the year 68 
B.C., was quite different from his first and sec- 
ond, since the third wife, Pompeia, belonged to 
one of the noblest families of the conservative 
aristocracy — ^was, in fact, a niece of Sulla. How 
could the nephew of Marius, who had escaped 
as by miracle the proscriptions of Sulla, ever 
have married the latter's niece? Because in 
the dozen years intervening between 80 and 
68, the political situation had gradually grown 
calmer, and a new air of conciliation had be- 
gun to blow through the city, troubled by so 
much confusion, burying in oblivion the 
bloodiest records of the civil war, calling into 
fresh life admiration for Marius, that hero who 
2 23 



THE WOMEN OF THE C.ESARS 

had conquered the Cimbri and the Teutons. 
In that moment, to be a nephew of Marius was 
no longer a crime among any of the great fam- 
ilies; for some, on the contrary, it was- coming 
to be the beginning of glory. But that situa- ^ 
tion was short-lived. After a brief truce, the 
two parties again took up a bitter war, and for 
his fourth wife Caesar chose Calpurnia, the 
daughter of Lucius Calpurnius Piso, consul in 
58, and a most influential senator of the popu- 
lar party. 

Whoever studies the history of the influential 
personages of Caesar's time, will find that their 
marriages follow the fortunes of the political 
situation. Where a purely political reason was 
wanting, there was the economic. A woman 
could aid powerfully a political career in two 
ways : by ably administering the household and 
by contributing to its expenses her dower or 
her personal fortune. Although the Romans 
gave their daughters an education relatively 
advanced, they never forgot to inculcate in 
them the idea that it was the duty of a woman, 
especially if she was nobly born, to know all 

24 



MARRIAGE IN ANCIENT ROME 

the arts of good housewifery, and especially, as 
most important, spinning and weaving. The 
reason for this lay in the fact that for the aris- 
tocratic families, who were in possession of 
vast lands and many flocks, it was easy to pro- 
vide themselves from their own estates with 
the wool necessary to clothe all their house- 
hold, from masters to the numerous retinue of 
slaves. If the materfamilias knew sufficiently 
well the arts of spinning and weaving to be 
able to organize in the home a small "factory" 
of slaves engaged in such tasks, and knew how 
to direct and survey them, to make them work 
with zeal and without theft, she could provide 
the clothing for the whole household, thus sav- 
ing the heavy expense of buying the stuffs 
from a merchant — notable economy in times 
when money was scarce and every family tried 
to make as little use of it as possible. The 
materfamilias held, then, in every home, 
a prime industrial office, that of clothing the 
entire household, and in proportion to her use- 
fulness in this office was she able to aid or in- 
jure the family. 

25 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

More important still were the woman's dower 
and her personal fortune. The Romans not 
only considered it perfectly honorable, saga- 
cious, and praiseworthy for a member of the 
political aristocracy to marry a rich woman for 
her wealth, the better to maintain the luster of 
his rank, or the more easily to fulfil his par- 
ticular political and social duties, but they also 
believed there could be no better luck or 
greater honor for a rich woman than for this 
reason to marry a prominent man. They ex- 
acted only that she be of respectable habits, 
and even in this regard it appears that, during 
certain tumultuous periods, they sometimes 
shut one eye. 

Tradition says, for example, that Sulla, born 
of a noble family, quite in ruin, owed his 
money to the bequest of a Greek woman whose 
wealth had the most impure origin that the 
possessions of a woman can possibly have. Is 
this tradition only the invention of the enemies 
of the terrible dictator? In any event, how 
people of good standing felt in this matter in 
normal times is shown by the life of Cicero. 

26 




THE SO-CALLED BUST OF CICERO 

All but the head is modern. Now in the Museo Capitolino; it was 
formerly in the Palazzo Barberini. 



MARRIAGE IN ANCIENT ROME 

Cicero was born at Arpino, of a knightly 
family, highly respectable, and well educated, 
but not rich. That he was able to pursue his 
brilliant forensic and political career, was 
chiefly due to his marriage to Terentia, who, 
although not very rich, had more than he, and 
by her fortune enabled him to live at Rome. 
But it is well known that after long living to- 
gether happily enough, as far as can be judged, 
Cicero and Terentia, already old, fell into dis- 
cord and in 46 b.c. ended by being divorced. 
The reasons for the divorce are not exactly 
clear, but from Cicero's letters it appears that 
financial motives and disputes were not want- 
ing. It seems that during the civil wars Teren- 
tia refused to help Cicero with her money to 
the extent he desired; that is to say, at some 
tremendous moment of those turbulent years 
she was unwilling to risk all her patrimony 
on the uncertain political fortune of her hus- 
band. 

Cicero's divorce, obliging him to return the 
dower, reduced him to the gravest straits, from 
which he emerged through another marriage. 

29 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

He was the guardian of an exceedingly rich 
young woman, named Publilia, and one fine 
day, at the age of sixty-three, he joined hands 
with this seventeen-year-old girl, whose pos- 
sessions were to rehabilitate the great writer. 

This conception of matrimony and of the fam- 
ily may seem unromantic, prosaic, material- 
istic; but we must not suppose that because of 
it the Romans failed to experience the tender- 
est and sweetest affections of the human heart. 
The letters of Cicero himself show^ how ten- 
derly even Romans could love wife and chil- 
dren. Although they distrusted and combatted 
as dangerous to the prosperity and well-being 
of the state those dearest and gentlest personal 
affections that in our times literature, music, 
religion, philosophy, and custom have edu- 
cated, encouraged, and exalted, as one of the 
supreme fountains of civil life, should we 
therefore reckon them barbarians? We must 
not forget the great diversity between our 
times and theirs. The confidence which mod- 
ern men repose in love as a principle, in its 

30 



MARRIAGE IN ANCIENT ROME 

ultimate wisdom, in its beneficial influence on 
the affairs of the world; in the idea that every 
man has the right to choose for himself the 
person of the opposite sex toward whom the 
liveliest and strongest personal attraction im- 
pels him — these are the supreme blossoms of 
modern individualism, the roots of which have 
been able to fasten only in the rich soil of mod- 
ern civilization. 

The great ease of living that we now enjoy, 
the lofty intellectual development of our day, 
permit us to relax the severe discipline that 
poorer times and peoples, constrained to lead 
a harder life, had to impose upon themselves. 
Although the habit may seem hard and bar- 
barous, certainly almost all the great peoples 
of the past, and the majority of those contem- 
porary who live outside our civilization, hav6 
conceived and practised matrimony not as a 
right of sentiment, but as a duty of reason. To 
fulfil it, the young have turned to the sagacity 
of the aged, and these have endeavored to pro- 
mote the success of marriage not merely to the 
satisfaction of a single passion, usually as brief 

31 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

as it is ardent, but according to a calculated 
equilibrium of qualities, tendencies, and ma- 
terial means. 

The principles regulating Roman marriage 
may seem to us at variance with human nature, 
but they are the principles to which all peoples 
wishing to trust the establishment of the fam- 
ily not to passion as mobile as the sea, but to 
reason, have had recourse in times when the 
family was an organism far more essential 
than it is to-day, because it held within itself 
many functions, educational, industrial, and 
political, now performed by other institutions. 
But reason itself is not perfect. Like passion, 
it has its weakness, and marriage so conceived 
by Rome produced grave inconveniences, 
which one must know in order to understand 
the story, in many respects tragic, of the 
women of the Caesars. 

The first difficulty was the early age at which 
marriages took place among the aristocracy. 
The boys were almost always married at from 
eighteen to twenty; the girls, at from thirteen 
to fifteen. This disadvantage is to be found 

32 



MARRIAGE IN ANCIENT ROME 

in all society in which marriage is arranged by 
the parents, because it would be next to im- 
possible to induce young people to yield to the 
will of their elders in an affair in which the 
passions are readily aroused if they were al- 
lowed to reach the age when the passions are 
strongest and the will has become independent. 
Hardly out of childhood, the man and the wo- 
man are naturally more tractable. On the 
other hand, it is easy to see how many dangers 
threatened such youthful marriages in a society 
where matrimony gave to the woman wide 
liberty, placing her in contact with other men, 
opening to her the doors of theaters and public 
resorts, leading her into the midst of all the 
temptations and illusions of life. 

The other serious disadvantage was the facil- 
ity of divorce. For the very reason that mat- 
rimony was for the nobility a political act, the 
Romans were never willing to allow that it 
could be indissoluble; indeed, even when the 
woman was in no sense culpable, they reserved 
to the man the right of undoing it at any time 
he wished, solely because that particular mar- 

33 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

riage did not suit his political interests. And 
the marriage could be dissolved by the most 
expeditious means, without formality — ^by a 
mere letter! Nor was that enough. Fearing 
that love might outweigh reason and calcula- 
tion in the young, the law granted to the father 
the right to give notice of divorce to the daugh- 
ter-in-law, instead of leaving it to the son; so 
that the father was able to make and unmake 
the marriages of his sons, as he thought useful 
and fitting, without taking their will into ac- 
count. 

The woman, therefore, although in the home 
she was of sovereign equality with the man 
and enjoyed a position full of honor, was, not- 
withstanding, never sure of the future. Neither 
the affection of her husband nor the stainless- 
ness of her life could insure that she should 
close her days in the house whither she had 
come in her youth as a bride. At any hour the 
fatalities of politics could, I will not say, drive 
her forth, but gently invite her exit from the 
house where her children were born. An ordi- 
nary letter was enough to annul a marriage. 

34 



MARRIAGE IN ANCIENT ROME 

So it was that, particularly in the age of Csesar, 
when politics were much perturbed and shift- 
ing, there were not a few women of the aris- 
tocracy who had changed husbands three or 
four times, and that not for lightness or caprice 
or inconstancy of tastes, but because their fa- 
thers, their brothers, sometimes their sons, had 
at a certain moment besought or constrained 
them to contract some particular marriage 
that should serve their own political ends. 

It is easy to comprehend how this precarious- 
ness discouraged woman from austere and 
rigorous virtues, the very foundation of the 
family; how it was a continuous incitement to 
frivolity of character, to dissipation, to infidel- 
ity. Consequently, the liberty the Romans 
allowed her must have been much more dan- 
gerous than the greater freedom she enjoys to- 
day, since it lacked its modern checks and 
balances, such as personal choice in marriage, 
the relatively mature age at which marriages 
are nowadays made, the indissolubility of the 
matrimonial contract, or, rather, the many and 
diverse restrictions placed upon divorce, by 

35 



THE WOMEN OF THE €iESARS 

which it is no longer left to the arbitrary will 
or the mere fancy of the man. 

In brief, there was in the constitution of the 
Roman family a contradiction, which must be 
well apprehended if one would understand the 
history of the great ladies of the imperial era. 
Rome desired woman in marriage to be the 
pliable instrument of the interests of the fam- 
ily and the state, but did not place her under 
the despotism of customs, of law, and of the 
will of man in the way done by all other states 
that have exacted from her complete self-ab- 
negation. Instead, it accorded to her almost 
wholly that liberty, granted with little danger 
by civilizations like ours, in which she may live 
not only for the family, for the state, for the 
race, but also for herself. Rome was unwilling 
to treat her as did the Greek and Asiatic world, 
but it did not on this account give up requiring 
of her the same total self-abnegation for the 
public weal, the utter obliviousness to her own 
aspirations and passions, in behalf of the race. 

This contradiction explains to us one of the 
fundamental phenomena of the history of 

36 







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From the marble bust in the British Museu 

JULIUS CiESAR 



MARRIAGE IN ANCIENT ROME 

Rome — the deep, tenacious, age-long puritan- 
ism of high Roman society. Puritanism was 
the chief expedient by which Rome attempted 
to solve the contradiction. That coercion 
which the Oriental world had tried to exercise 
upon woman by segregating her, keeping her 
ignorant, terrorizing her with threats and pun- 
ishments, Rome sought to secure by training. 
It inculcated in every way by means of educa- 
tion, religion, and opinion the idea that she 
should be pious, chaste, faithful, devoted alone 
to her husband and children; that luxury, 
prodigality, dissoluteness, were horrible vices, 
the infamy of which hopelessly degraded all 
that was best and purest in woman. It tried to 
protect the minds of both men and women 
from all those influences of art, literature, and 
religion which might tend to arouse the per- 
sonal instinct and the longing for love; and for 
a long time it distrusted, withstood, and al- 
most sought to disguise the mythology, the 
arts, and the literature of Greece, as well as 
many of the Asiatic religions, imbued as they 
were with an erotic spirit of subtle enticement. 

39 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

Puritanism is essentially an intense effort to 
rouse in the mind the liveliest repulsion for 
certain vices and pleasures, and a violent dread 
of them; and Rome made use of it to check and 
counterbalance the liberty of woman, to im- 
pede and render more difficult the abuses of 
such liberty, particularly prodigality and dis- 
soluteness. 

It is therefore easy to understand how this 
Puritanism was a thing serious, weighty, and 
terrible, in Roman life; and how from it could 
be born the tragedies we have to recount. It 
was the chief means of solving one of the 
gravest problems that has perplexed all civili- 
zations — the problem of woman and her free- 
dom, a problem earnest, difficult, and complex 
which springs up everywhere out of the unob- 
structed anarchy and the tremendous material 
prosperity of the modern world. And the dif- 
ficulty of the problem consists, above all, in 
this: that, although it is a hard, cruel, plainly 
iniquitous thing to deprive a woman of liberty 
and subject her to a regime of tyranny in order 
to constrain her to live for the race and not for 

40 



MARRIAGE IN ANCIENT ROME 

herself, yet when liberty is granted her to live 
for herself, to satisfy her personal desires, she 
abuses that liberty more readily than a man 
does, and more than a man forgets her duties 
toward the race. 

She abuses it more readily for two reasons : 
because she exercises a greater power over 
man than he over her; and because, in the 
wealthier classes, she is freer from the politi- 
cal and economic responsibilities that bind the 
man. However unbridled the freedom that 
man enjoys, however vast his egoism, he is 
always constrained in a certain measure to 
check his selfish instincts by the need of con- 
serving, enlarging, and defending against 
rivals his social, economic, and political situa- 
tion. 

But the woman? If she is freed from family 
cares, if she is authorized to live for her own 
gratification and for her beauty; if the opinion 
that imposes upon her, on pain of infamy, 
habits pure and honest, weakens; if, instead of 
infamy, dissoluteness brings her glory, riches, 
homage, what trammel can still restrain in her 

41 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

the selfish instincts latent in every human 
being? She runs the mighty danger of chang- 
ing into an irresponsible being who will be the 
more admired and courted and possessed of 
power — at least as long as her beauty lasts — 
the more she ignores every duty, subordinating 
all good sense to her own pleasure. 

This is the reason why woman, in periods 
commanded by strong social discipline, is the 
most beneficent and tenacious among the co- 
hesive forces of a nation; and why, in times 
when social discipline is relaxed, she is, in- 
stead, through ruinous luxury, dissipation, and 
voluntary sterility, the most terrible force for 
dissolution. 

One of the greatest problems of every epoch 
and all civilizations is to find a balance be- 
tween the natural aspiration for freedom that 
is none other than the need of personal felicity 
— a need as lively and profound in the heart of 
woman as of man — and the supreme necessity 
for a discipline without which the race, the 
state, and the family run the gravest danger. 
Yet this problem to-day, in the unmeasured 

42 




From the statue found in the theater of Herculaneum 
Now in the Museo Nazionale, Naples 



THE SISTER OF M. NONIUS BALBUS 



MARRIAGE IN ANCIENT ROME 

exhilaration with which riches and power in- 
toxicate the European-American civilization, 
is considered with the superficial frivolity and 
the voluble dilettantism that despoil or con- 
fuse all the great problems of esthetics, phi- 
losophy, statesmanship, and morality. We live 
in the midst of what might be called the Satur- 
nalia of the world's history; and in the midst 
of the swift and easy labor, the inebriety of 
our continual festivities, we feel no more the 
tragic in life. This short history of the women 
of the Caesars will set before the eyes of this 
pleasure-loving contemporary age tragedies 
among whose ruins our ancestors lived from 
birth to death, and by which they tempered 
their minds. 



45 



II 

LIVIA AND JULIA 

IN the year 38 b.c. it suddenly became known 
at Rome that C. Julius Caesar Octavianus 
(afterward the Emperor Augustus), one of the 
triumvirs of the republic, and colleague of 
Mark Antony and Lepidus in the military dic- 
tatorship established after the death of Caesar, 
had sent up for decision to the pontifical col- 
lege, the highest religious authority of the 
state, a curious question. It was this: Might a 
divorced woman who was expecting to become 
a mother contract a marriage with another 
man before the birth of her child? The pon- 
tifical college replied that if there still was 
doubt about the fact the new marriage would 
not be permissible; but if it was certain, there 
would be no impediment. A few days later, it 
was learned that Octavianus had divorced his 
wife Scribonia and had married Livia, a young 
woman of nineteen. Livia's physical condi- 

46 



LIVIA AND JULIA 



tion was precisely that concerning which the 
pontiffs had been asked to decide, and in order 
to enter into this marriage she had obtained a 
divorce from Tiberius Claudius Nero. 

The two divorces and the new marriage were 
concluded with unwonted haste. The first 
husband of Livia, acting the part of a father, 
gave her a dowry for her new alliance and was 
present at the wedding. Thus Livia suddenly 
passed into the house of her new husband, 
where, three months later, she gave birth to a 
son, who was called Drusus Claudius Nero. 
This child Octavianus immediately sent to the 
house of its father. 

To us, marriage customs of this sort seem 
brutal, shameless, and almost ridiculous. We 
should infer that a woman who lent herself to 
such barter and exchange must be a person of 
light manners and of immoral inclinations. At 
Rome, however, no one would have been 
amazed at such a marriage or at the procedure 
adopted, had it not been for the extraordinary 
haste, which seemed to indicate that it was un- 
desirable or impossible to wait until Livia 

47 



THE WOMEN OF THE CiESARS 

should have given birth to her child, and which 
made it necessary to trouble the pontifical col- 
lege for its somewhat sophistical consent. For 
all were accustomed to seeing the marriages of 
great personages made and unmade in this 
manner and on such bases. Why, then, were 
these nuptials so precipitately concluded, ap- 
parently with the consent of all concerned? 
Why did they all, Livia and Octavianus not less 
than Tiberius Claudius Nero, seem so impa- 
tient that everything should be settled with 
despatch? 

The legend which then formed about the 
family of Augustus, a legend hostile at almost 
every point, has interpreted this marriage as a 
tyrannical act, virtually an abduction, by the 
dissolute and perverse triumvir. I, too, in my 
"Greatness and Decline of Rome" expressed 
my belief that this haste, at least, was the effect 
not of political motives but of a passionate 
love inspired in the young triumvir by the very 
beautiful Livia. A longer reflection upon this 
episode has persuaded me, however, that there 
is another manner, less poetic perhaps, but 

48 




«:*;«^!^-^' 




From the statue in Naples 

LIVIA, THE MOTHER OF TIBERIUS, IN THE COSTUME 
OF A PRIESTESS 



LIVIA AND JULIA 



more Roman, of explaining, at least in part, 
this famous alliance, which was to have so 
great an importance in the history of Rome. 

To arrive at the motives of this marriage we 
must consider who was Livia and who was Oc- 
tavianus. Livia was a woman of great beauty, 
as her portraits prove. But this was not all. 
She belonged also to two of the most ancient 
and conspicuous families of the Roman nobil- 
ity. Her father, Marcus Livius Drusus Clau- 
dianus, was by birth a Claudius, adopted by a 
Livius Drusus. He was descended from Ap- 
pius the Blind, the famous censor and perhaps 
the most illustrious personage of the ancient 
republic. His grandfather, his great-grand- 
father, and his great-great-grandfather had 
been consuls, and consuls and censors may be 
found in the collateral branches of the family. 
A sister of his grandfather had been the wife 
of Tiberius Gracchus; a cousin of his father 
had married Lucullus, the great general. He 
came, therefore, of one of the most ancient 
and glorious families. Not less noble was the 
family of the Livii Drusi who had adopted him. 

51 



THE WOMEN OF THE CiESARS 

It counted eight consulships, two censorships, 
three triumphs, and one dictatorship. Thus 
the father of Livia belonged by birth and adop- 
tion to two of those ancient, aristocratic fam- 
ilies which for a long time and even in the 
midst of the most tremendous revolutions the 
people had venerated as semi-divine and into 
whose story was interwoven the history of the 
great republic. Nor had the first husband given 
to Livia been less noble, for Tiberius Claudius 
Nero was descended like Livia from Appius the 
Blind, though through another son of the great 
censor. In Livia was concentrated the quin- 
tessence of the great Roman aristocracy: she 
was at Rome what in London to-day the daugh- 
ter of the Duke of Westminster or the Duke of 
Bedford would be, and her noble rank explains 
the role which her family had played during 
the Civil War. In the great revolution which 
broke out after the death of Caesar, the father 
of Livia in the year 43 had been proscribed by 
the triumvirs; he had fought with Brutus and 
Cassius and had died by his own hand after 
Philippi. In 40, after the Perusinian war and 

52 



LIVIA AND JULIA 



only two years before Livia's marriage with 
Octavianus, Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia 
had been forced to flee from Italy in fear of the 
vengeance of Octavianus. 

Who on the other hand was Octavianus? A 
parvenu, with a nobility altogether too recent! 
His grandfather was a rich usurer of Velitrae 
(now Velletri), a financier and a man of af- 
fairs; it was only his immediate father who 
succeeded by dint of the riches of the usurer 
grandfather in entering the Roman nobility. 
He had married a sister of Caesar and, though 
still young when he died, had become a senator 
and pretor. Octavianus was, therefore, the 
descendant, as we should express it in Europe 
to-day, of rich bourgeois recently ennobled. 
Although by adopting him in his will Caesar 
had given him his name, that of an ancient 
patrician family, the modest origin of Octa- 
vianus and the trade of his grandfather were 
known to everybody. In a country like Rome, 
where, notwithstanding revolutions, the old 
nobility was still highly venerated by the peo- 
ple and formed a closed caste, jealous of its 

53 



THE WOMEN OF THE C.ESARS 

exclusive pride of ancestry, this obscurity of 
origin was a handicap and a danger, especially 
when Octavianus had as colleagues Antony and 
Lepidus, who could boast a much more ancient 
and illustrious origin than his own. 

We can readily explain, therefore, even 
without admitting that Livia had aroused in 
him a violent passion, why the future Augus- 
tus should have been so impatient to marry 
her in 38 B.C. The times were stormy and un- 
certain; the youthful triumvir, whom a caprice 
of fortune had raised to the head of a revolu- 
tionary dictatorship, was certainly the weakest 
of the three colleagues, because of his youth, 
his slighter experience, the feebler prestige 
among his soldiers, and, last of all, the greater 
obscurity of his lineage. Antony, especially, 
who had fought in so many wars, with Caesar 
and alone, who belonged to a family of really 
ancient nobility, was much more popular than 
he among the soldiers and had stronger rela- 
tions with the great families. He was there- 
fore more powerful than Octavianus both in 
high places and in low. A marriage with Livia 

54 



/ 



LIVIA AND JULIA 



meant much to the future Augustus. It would 
open for him a door into the old aristocracy; 
it would draw him closer to those families 
which, in spite of the revolution, were still so 
influential and venerable; it would be the 
means of lessening the hatred, contempt, and 
distrust in which these families held him. It 
was for him what Napoleon's marriage with 
Marie Louise and the consequent connection 
with the imperial family of Austria had been 
for the former Corsican officer, become Em- 
peror of the French. Since, now, a lady who 
belonged to one of these great families was 
disposed to marry him, it would have been 
foolish to put obstacles in the way; it was nec- 
essary to act with despatch; time and fortune 
might change. 

Such are the motives that may have induced 
Augustus to hasten the nuptials. But what 
were the motives of Livia in accepting this 
marriage, in such stormy times, when the for- 
tunes of the future Augustus were still so un- 
certain? A passage in Velleius Paterculus 
would lead us to believe that he who devised 

55 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

this historic marriage was none other than that 
same first husband of Livia, Tiberius Claudius 
Nero himself! According to our ideas it is in- 
conceivable; but not at all strange according to 
the ideas of the Roman. It is probable that 
Tiberius Claudius Nero, feeling that the 
triumph of the revolution was now assured, 
had wished by this marriage to attach to the 
cause of the old aristocracy the youngest of the 
three revolutionary leaders. Already well 
along in years and infirm, — he was to die 
shortly after, — Nero, who well knew the intel- 
ligence of his young wife, was perhaps plan- 
ning to place her in the house of the man in 
whom all saw one of the future lords of Rome. 
Thus he would bind him to the interests of the 
aristocracy. In the person of Livia there en- 
tered into the house of Octavianus the old 
Roman nobility, which, defeated at Philippi, 
was striving to reacquire through the prestige 
and the cleverness of a woman what it had not 
been able to maintain by arms. 

All her life long, with constancy, moderation, 
and wonderful tact, Livia fulfilled her mission. 

56 



LIVIA AND JULIA 



She succeeded in resolving into the admirable 
harmony of a long existence that contradiction 
between the liberty conceded to her sex and the 
self-denial demanded of it by man as a duty. 
She was assuredly one of the most perfect 
models of that lady of high society whom the 
Romans in all the years of their long and tem- 
pestuous history never ceased to admire. Even 
and serene, completely mistress of herself and 
of her passions, endowed with a robust will, she 
accommodated herself without difficulty to all 
the sacrifices which her rank and situation im- 
posed upon her. She changed husbands with- 
out repugnance, though her marriage to Oc- 
tavianus occurred but five years after the 
proscriptions, while he was still red with the 
blood of her family and friends. Likewise she 
renounced her two sons, the future emperor 
Tiberius, who had been born before her second 
marriage, as well as the one who had been 
born after. So too when, a few years later, 
Tiberius Claudius Nero died, appointing Au- 
gustus their guardian, with equal serenity she 
took them back and educated them with the 

57 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

most careful motherly solicitude. To the sec- 
ond husband, whom politics had given her, she 
was a faithful companion. Scandal imputed 
to her absurd poisonings which she did not 
commit, and accused her of insatiable ambi- 
tions and perfidious intrigues. No one ever 
dared accuse her of infidelity to Augustus or of 
dissolute conduct. The great fame, power, and 
wealth of her husband did not disturb the calm 
poise of her spirit. In that palace of Augustus, 
adorned with triumphal laurel, toward which 
the eyes of the subjects were turned from 
every part of the empire, in that palace where, 
in little councils with the most eminent men of 
the senate, were debated the supreme interests 
of the world, — ^laws and elections, wars and 
peace, — she preserved the beautiful traditions 
of simplicity and industry. These she had 
learned as a child in the house of her father, — 
a house as much more illustrious with inher- 
ited glory as it was poorer in wealth than that 
which Victory had prepared for Augustus on 
the Palatine. 
We know — it is Suetonius who tells us— that 

58 




From a photograph by Broi^i of the marble bust now in the Vatican 

THE YOLUNG AUGUSTUS 



LIVIA AND JULIA 



this house on the Palatine built by Augustus, 
in which Livia spent the larger part of her life, 
was small and not at all luxurious. In it there 
was not a single piece of marble nor a precious 
mosaic; for forty years Augustus slept in the 
same bedchamber, and the furniture of the 
house was so simple that in the second century 
of our era it was exhibited to the public as an 
extraordinary curiosity. The imperial pair 
had several villas, at Lanuvium, at Palestrina, 
at Tivoli, but all of them were unpretentious 
and simple. Nor was there any more pomp 
and ceremony about the dinners to which they 
invited the conspicuous personages of Rome, 
the dignitaries of the state and the heads of the 
great families. Only on very special occasions 
were six courses served; usually there were but 
three. Moreover, Augustus never wore any 
other togas than those woven by Livia; woven 
not indeed and altogether by Livia's hands, — 
though she did not disdain, now and then, to 
work the loom, — but by her slaves and freed- 
women. Faithful to the traditions of the aris- 
tocracy, Livia counted it among her duties per- 

61 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

sonally to direct the weaving-rooms which 
were in the house. As she carefully parceled 
out the wool to the slaves, watching over them 
lest they steal or waste it, and frequently tak- 
ing her place among them while they were at 
work, she felt that she too contributed to the 
prosperity and the glory of the empire. 

Simplicity, loyalty, industry, an absolute 
surrender of one's own personality to the fam- 
ily and its interests, — these, in the great 
families, were the traditional feminine virtues 
which lived again in Livia to the admiration of 
her contemporaries. But with these virtues 
were associated also the need and the pride of 
participating in the affairs and work of her 
husband, that interest in politics which had 
been common to the intelligent women of the 
nobility. No one at Rome was astonished, 
especially in the upper classes, that Livia 
should occupy herself actively with politics; 
that Augustus should frequently come to her 
for counsel, or that he should not make any 
serious decision without having consulted her; 
that, in short, she should at the same time at- 

62 



LIVIA AND JULIA 



tend to her husband's clothes and aid him in 
governing the empire. For so had done from 
time immemorial all the great ladies of the 
aristocracy, mindful of their good repute and 
the prosperity of their families. And Livia 
must have tried the more earnestly to fulfil all 
that her education had taught her to consider 
a sacred duty, since to a woman of her old- 
fashioned breeding the times must have ap- 
peared especially difficult and perilous. 

The civil wars had greatly reduced in num- 
bers the historic aristocracy of Rome, and the 
peace which followed after so long a time and 
which had been so anxiously invoked, very 
soon began to threaten the prosperity of the 
remnant of that nobility with a more insidious 
but more inevitable ruin. About 18 B.C., when 
Livia was approaching her fortieth year, the 
men of the new generation w^ho had not seen 
the civil wars, for when these ended they were 
either unborn or only in their infancy, were 
already beginning to come to the front. They 
brought with them a previously unknown 
spirit of luxury, of enjoyment, of dissipation, 

63 



THE WOMEN OF THE C.ESARS 

of rebellion against discipline, of egotism and 
fondness for the new, which rendered very 
difficult, not to say impossible, the continua- 
tion of the aristocratic regime. Women sub- 
mitted with more and more repugnance to 
those obligatory marriages, arranged for rea- 
sons of state, which had formerly been the 
tradition and the sure bulwark of dominion 
for the aristocracy. The increase of celibacy 
was rendering sterile the most celebrated 
stocks; the most lamentable vices and disor- 
ders became tolerated and common in the most 
illustrious families, and ruinous habits of ex- 
travagance spread generally among that aris- 
tocracy, once so simple and austere. All this 
had grown up after the conquest of Egypt, 
which had established more points of contact 
with the East; and it increased in proportion as 
those industries and the commerce in articles 
of luxury which had flourished at Alexandria 
under the Ptolemies were gradually trans- 
planted to Rome, where the merchants hoped 
to establish among their conquerors the clien- 
tele which had been lost with the fall of the 

64 




THE EMPEROR AUGUSTUS 

This statue was found in 1910 in the Via Labicana, not far 
from the Colosseum 



LIVIA AND JULIA 



Kingdom of the Nile. The ladies especially 
took up with the new oriental customs, and, 
preferring expensive stuffs and jewels, turned 
from the loom, which Livia had wished to pre- 
serve as the emblem of womanhood. Many 
young men of the great families were begin- 
ning to show a distaste for the army, for the 
government of the state, for jurisprudence, for 
all those activities which had been the jealous 
privilege of the nobility of the past. One gave 
himself up to literary pursuits, another culti- 
vated philosophy, another busied himself only 
with the increase of his inherited fortune, 
while another lived only in pleasure and idle- 
ness. So it happened that there began to ap- 
pear descendants of great houses who refused 
to be senators; every year an effort had to be 
made to find a sufficient number of candidates 
for the more numerous positions like the 
questorship, and in the army it was no easy 
matter to fill all the posts of the superior offi- 
cers which were reservedi for members of the 
nobility. 
The Roman aristocracy then, that glorious 

* 67 



THE WOMEN OF THE CiESARS 



Roman aristocracy which had escaped the 
massacres of the proscriptions and of Philippi, 
ran grave danger of dying out through a spe- 
cies of slow suicide, if energetic measures were 
not taken to supply the necessary remedies. It 
is certain that Livia had a conspicuous part 
in the policy of restoring the aristocracy, to 
which Augustus was impelled by the old nobil- 
ity, especially toward the year 18 B.C., w^hen 
with this purpose in view he proposed his 
famous social laws. The Lex de maritandis 
ordinibus attempted by various penalties and 
promises to constrain the members of the 
aristocracy to contract marriage and to found 
a family, thus combatting the increasing in- 
clination to celibacy and sterility. The Lex de 
adulteriis aimed to reestablish order and virtue 
in the family, by threatening the unfaithful 
wife and her accomplice with exile for life and 
the confiscation of a part of their substance. It 
obliged the husband to expose the crime to the 
tribunals; if the husband could not or would 
not make the accusation, it provided that the 
father should do so; and in case both husband 

68 



LIVIA AND JULIA 



and father failed, it authorized any citizen to 
step forth as accuser. Finally the Lex sumptu- 
aria was designed to restrain the extravagance 
of wealthy families, particularly that of the 
women, prohibiting them from spending too 
large a part of the family fortune in jewels, 
apparel, body slaves, festivities, or buildings, 
especially in the building of sumptuous villas, 
then a growing fashion. In short, it was the 
purpose of these laws to bring the ladies of the 
Roman aristocracy to a course of conduct pat- 
terned upon the example of Livia. In the pro- 
tracted discussions concerning these laws, 
which took place in the senate, Augustus on 
one occasion made a long speech in which he 
cited Livia as a model for the ladies of Rome. 
He set forth minutely the details of her house- 
hold administration, telling how she lived, 
what relations she had with outsiders, what 
amusements she thought proper for a person 
of her rank, how she dressed and at what ex- 
pense. And no one in the senate judged it 
unworthy of the greatness of the state or con- 
trary to custom thus to introduce the name and 

69 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

person of a great lady into the public discus- 
sion of so serious a matter of governmental 
policy. 

Livia, then, about 18 b.c. personified in the 
eyes of the Romans the perfect type of aristo- 
cratic great lady created by long tradition. 
Having been safely preserved by good fortune 
through the long civil wars, this model was 
now set back again upon a fitting pedestal in 
the most powerful and richest family of the 
empire. She was the living example of all the 
virtues which the Romans most cherished, a 
beloved wife and a heeded counselor to the 
head of the state, honored with that veneration 
which power, virtue, nobility of birth, and the 
dignified beauty of face and figure drew from 
every one; furthermore, there were her two 
sons, Tiberius and Drusus, both intelligent, 
handsome, full of activity, docile to the tradi- 
tional education which she sought to give them 
in order that they might be the worthy continu- 
ators of the great name they bore. Livia, with 
all this in her favor, might have been expected 
to live a happy and tranquil life, serenely to 

70 




Enlarged from the original owned by Professor G. N. Olcott 

A SILVER DENARIUS OF THE SECOND TRIUMVIRATE 

The portrait at the right (obverse) is of Caesar Octavianus (Augustus), with a 

sHght beard to indicate mourning, and at the left (reverse), 

of Mark Antony. The date is 41 B.C. 




"^% 






Enlarg-ed from the original owned by Professor G. N. Olcott 

SILVER COIN BEARING THE HEAD OF 
JULIUS C^SAR 

This coin, a denarius, worth about seventeen cents, repre- 
sents Caesar as Pontifex Maximus. Together with all the 
other Roman coins bearing Cassar's image, it was struck in 
the year before his death — 44-45 B. c. The fact that Caesar 
placed his image on these coins may have strengthened the 
suspicion of his enemies that he wished to make himself king 



LIVIA AND JULIA 



fulfil her mission amid the admiration of the 
world. 

But opposition and difficulties sprang up in 
her own family. In 39 b.c. Augustus had had 
by Scribonia a daughter, Julia. Following in 
the government of his family, as in so large a 
part of his politics, the traditions of the old 
nobility, Augustus gave his daughter in mar- 
riage when very young, — she was not yet past 
seventeen, — ^just as he early gave wives to 
Livia's two sons, whose guardian he was. In 
each case in order to assure within his circle 
harmony and power, he chose the consort in 
his own family or from among his friends. To 
Tiberius he gave Agrippina, a daughter of 
Agrippa, his close friend and most faithful col- 
laborator; to Drusus he gave Antonia, the 
younger daughter of Mark Antony and Octa- 
via, sister of Augustus. To Julia he gave Mar- 
cellus, his nephew, the son of Octavia and her 
first husband. But while the marriages of 
Drusus and Tiberius proved successful and the 
two couples lived lovingly and happily, such 
was not the case with the marriage of Julia and 

73 



THE WOMEN OF THE CiESARS 

Marcellus. As a result, disagreeable misunder- 
standings and rancors soon made themselves 
felt in the family. We do not know exactly 
what were the causes of these disagreements. 
It seems that Marcellus, under the influence of 
Julia, assumed a tone somewhat too haughty 
and insolent, such as was not becoming in a 
youth who, although the nephew of Augustus, 
was still taking his first steps in his political 
career; and it seems too that this conduct of 
his was especially offensive to Agrippa, who, 
next to Augustus, was the first person in the 
empire. 

In short, at seventeen, Julia desired that 
her husband should be the second person- 
age of the state in order that she might come 
immediately after Livia or even be placed di- 
rectly on an equality with her. According to 
the Roman ideas of the family and of its disci- 
pline, this was a precocious and excessive am- 
bition, unbecoming a matron, much less a 
young girl. For the duty of the woman was to 
follow faithfully and submissively the ambi- 
tions of her lord and not to impart to him her 

74 



LIVIA AND JULIA 



own ambitions or make him her tool. In con- 
trast to Livia, who was so docile and placid in 
her respect for the older traditions of the aris- 
tocracy, so firm and strong in her observance 
of the duties, not infrequently grievous and 
difQcult, which this tradition imposed, Julia 
represented the woman of that new generation 
which had grown up in the times of peace — a 
type more rebellious against tradition, less re- 
signed to the serious duties and difficult renun- 
ciations of rank; much more inclined to enjoy 
its prerogatives than disposed to bear that 
heavy burden of obligations and sacrifices 
w^ith which the previous generations had bal- 
anced privilege. Beautiful and intelligent, 
even in the early years of her first marriage 
she showed a great passion for studies, and a 
fme artistic and literary taste, and with these a 
lively inclination toward luxury and display 
which hardly suited with the spirit or the letter 
of the Lex sumptuaria which her father had 
carried through in that year. But fraught with 
greater danger than all this was her ardent 
and passionate temperament, which both in 

75 



THE WOMEN OF THE CiESARS 



the family and in politics was altogether too 
frequently to drive her to desire and to carry 
through that which, rightly or wrongly, was 
forbidden to a woman by law, custom, and 
public opinion. 

It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that a 
young woman endowed with so fiery and am- 
bitious a nature did not become in the hands of 
Augustus as docile a political instrument as 
Livia. Julia wished to live for herself and for 
her pleasure, not for the political greatness of 
her father; and indeed, Augustus, who had a 
fine knowledge of men, was so impressed by 
this first unhappy experiment that when Mar- 
cellus, still a very young man, died in 23 B.C., 
he hesitated a long time before remarrying the 
youthful widow. For a moment, indeed, he 
did think of bestowing her not upon a senator 
but upon a knight, that is, a person outside of 
the political aristocracy, evidently with the in- 
tention of stifling her too eager ambitions by 
taking from her all means and hope of satis- 
fying them. Then he decided upon the oppo- 
site expedient, that of quieting those ambitions 

76 



LIVIA AND JULIA 



by entirely satisfying them, and so gave Julia, 
in 21 B.C., to Agrippa, who had been the cause 
of the earlier difficulties. Agrippa was twenty- 
four years older than she and could have been 
her father, but he was in truth the second per- 
son of the empire in glory, riches, and power. 
Soon after, in 18 e.g., he was to become the col- 
league of Augustus in the presidency of the re- 
public and consequently his equal in everyway. 
Thus Julia suddenly saw her ambitions 
gratified. She became at twenty-one the next 
lady of the empire after Livia, and perhaps 
even the first in company with and beside her. 
Young, beautiful, intelligent, cultured, and lov- 
ing luxury, she represented at Livia's side and 
in opposition to her, the trend of the new 
generation in which was growing the determi- 
nation to free itself from tradition. She lav- 
ished money generously, and there soon 
formed about her a sort of court, a party, a 
coterie, in which figured the fairest names of 
the Roman aristocracy. Her name and her 
person became popular even among the com- 
mon people of Rome, to whom the name of the 

77 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

Julii was more sympathetic than that of the 
Claudii, which was borne by the sons of Livia. 
The combined popularity of Augustus and of 
Agrippa was reflected in her. It may be said, 
therefore, that toward 18 b.c, the younger, 
more brilliant, and more "modern" Julia be- 
gan to obscure Livia in the popular imagina- 
tion, except in that little group of old conserva- 
tive nobility which gathered about the wife of 
Augustus. So true is this that about this time, 
Augustus, wishing to place himself into con- 
formity with his law de maritandis ordinibus, 
reached a significant decision. Since that law 
fixed at three the number of children which 
every citizen should have, if he wished to dis- 
charge his whole duty toward the state, and 
since Augustus had but a single daughter, he 
decided to adopt Caius and Lucius, the first two 
sons that Julia had borne to Agrippa. This was 
a great triumph for her, in so far as her sons 
would henceforth bear the very popular name 
of Caesar. 

But the difficulties which the first marriage 
with Marcellus had occasioned and which 

78 



LIVIA AND JULIA 



Augustus had hoped to remove by this second 
marriage soon reappeared in another but still 
more dangerous form, for they had their roots 
in that passionate, imperious, bold, and impru- 
dent temperament of Julia. This tempera- 
ment the Roman education had not succeeded 
in taming; it was strengthened by the undis- 
ciplined spirit of the times. And with it Julia 
soon began to abuse the fortune, the popular- 
ity, the prestige, and the power which came to 
her from being the daughter of Augustus and 
the wife of Agrippa. Little by little she became 
possessed by the mania of being in Rome the 
antithesis of Livia, of conducting herself in 
every case in a manner contrary to that fol- 
lowed by her stepmother. If the latter, like 
Augustus, wore garments of wool woven at 
home, Julia affected silks purchased at great 
price from the oriental merchants. These the 
ladies of the older type considered a ruinous 
luxury because of the expense, and an in- 
decency because of the prominence which they 
gave to the figure. Where Livia was sparing, 
Julia was prodigal. If Livia preferred to go to 

79 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

the theater surrounded by elderly and digni- 
fied men, Julia always showed herself in public 
with a retinue of brilliant and elegant youths. 
If Livia set an example of reserve, Julia dared 
appear in the provinces in public at the side of 
her husband and receive public homage. In 
spite of the law which forbade the wives of 
Roman governors to accompany their hus- 
bands into the provinces, Julia prevailed upon 
Agrippa to make her his companion when in 
the year 16 B.C. he made his long journey 
through the East. Everywhere she appeared 
at his side, at the great receptions, at the courts, 
in the cities; and she was the first of the Latin 
women to be apotheosized in the Orient. Pa- 
phos called her "divine" and set up statues to 
her; Mitylene called her the New Aphrodite, 
Eressus, Aphrodite Genetrix. These were bold 
innovations in a state in which tradition was 
still so powerful; but they could scarcely have 
been of serious danger to Julia, if her pas- 
sionate temperament had not led her to 
commit a much more serious imprudence. 
Agrippa, compared to her, was old, a simple, 

80 




From the cameo in the Cabinet des M^dailles, Paris 

THE GREAT PARIS CAMEO 

This IS the largest ancient cameo known, and is said to have been sent from Constantinople 
by Baldwinll. loLouisIX. Itrepresents the Hving members of the imperial family protected 
by the deified Augustus. In the center Tiberius is shown seated, as Jupiter, with his mother, 
Livia, at his left, as Ceres. In front of thera stand Germanicus and his mother Antonia 



LIVIA AND JULIA 



unpolished man of obscure origin who was 
frequently absent on affairs of state. In the 
circle which had formed about Julia there were 
a number of handsome, elegant, pleasing 
young men; among others one Sempronius 
Gracchus, a descendant of the famous tribunes. 
Julia seems toward the close to have had for 
him, even in the lifetime of Agrippa, certain 
failings which the Lex de adulteriis visited 
with terrible punishments. 

It is not to be wondered at, therefore, if from 
this time on there should have been fostered 
between Julia and Livia a half-suppressed 
rivalry. The fact is, in itself, very probable 
and several indications of it have remained in 
tradition and in history. We know also that 
two parties were already beginning to gather 
about the two women. One of these might be 
called the party of the Claudii and of the old 
conservative nobility, the other the party of 
the Julii and of that youthful nobility which 
was following the modern trend. As long as 
Agrippa lived, Augustus, by holding the bal- 
ance between the two factions, succeeded in 

83 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

maintaining a certain equilibrium. With the 
death of Agrippa, which occurred in 12 B.C., the 
situation was changed. 

Julia was now for the second time a widow, 
and by the provisions of the Lex de maritandis 
ordinibus should remarry. Augustus in the 
traditional manner sought a husband for her, 
and, seeking him only with the idea of further- 
ing a political purpose, he found for her Ti- 
berius, the elder son of Livia. Tiberius was the 
stepbrother of Julia and was married to a lady 
whom he tenderly loved; but these were con- 
siderations which could hardly give pause to a 
Roman senator. In the marriage of Tiberius 
and Julia, Augustus saw a way of snuffing out 
the incipient discord between the Julii and the 
Claudii, between Julia and Livia, between the 
parties of the new and of the old nobility. He 
therefore ordered Tiberius to repudiate the 
young, beautiful, and noble Agrippina in order 
to marry Julia. For Tiberius the sacrifice was 
hard; we are told that one day after the divorce, 
having met Agrippina at some house, he began 
to weep so bitterly that Augustus ordered that 

84 



LIVIA AND JULIA 



the former husband and wife should never 
meet again. But Tiberius, on the other hand, 
had been educated by his mother in the ancient 
ideas, and therefore knew that a Roman noble- 
man must sacrifice his feelings to the public 
interest. As for Julia, she celebrated her third 
wedding joyfully; for Tiberius, after the 
deaths of Agrippa and of his own brother Dru- 
sus, was the rising man, the hope and the sec- 
ond personage of the empire, so that she was 
not forced to step down from the lofty position 
which the marriage with Agrippa had given 
her. Tiberius, furthermore, was a very hand- 
some man and for this reason also he seems not 
to have been displeasing to Julia, who in the 
matter of husbands considered not only glory 
and power. 

The marriage of Julia and Tiberius began 
under happy auspices. Julia seemed to love 
Tiberius and Tiberius did what he could to be 
a good husband. Julia soon felt that she was 
once more to become a mother and the hope 
of this other child seemed to cement the union 
between husband and wife. But the rosy 

85 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

promises of the beginning were soon disap- 
pointed. Tiberius was the son of Livia, a true 
Claudius, the worthy heir of two ancient lines, 
an uncompromising traditionalist, therefore a 
rigid and disdainful aristocrat, and a soldier 
severe with others as with himself. He wished 
the aristocracy to set the people an example of 
all the virtues which had made Rome so great 
in peace and war: religious piety, simplicity of 
customs, frugality, family purity, and rigid 
observance of all the laws. The luxury and 
prodigality which were becoming more and 
more wide-spread among the young nobility 
had no fiercer enemy than he. He held that a 
man of great lineage who spent his substance 
on jewels, on dress, and on revels was a traitor 
to his country, and no one demanded with 
greater insistence than he that the great laws of 
the year 18 e.g., the sumptuary law, the laws 
on marriage and adultery, should be enforced 
with the severest rigor. Julia, on the other 
hand, loved extravagance, festivals, joj^ous 
companies of elegant youths, an easy, brilliant 
life full of amusement. 

86 




1 n.)i tl L St ui 11 ii, 1 I Li 1 1 Museum, Rome 

OCTAVIA, THE SISTER OF AUGUSTUS 



LIVIA AND JULIA 



For greater misfortune, the son who was 
born of their union died shortly after and dis- 
cord found its way between Julia and Tiberius. 
Sempronius Gracchus, who knew how to profit 
by this, reappeared and again made advances 
to Julia. She again lent her ear to his bland 
words and the domestic disagreement rapidly 
became embittered. Tiberius,— this is certain, 
— soon learned that Julia had resumed her 
relations with Sempronius Gracchus, and a 
new, intolerable torment was added to his al- 
ready distressed life. According to the Lex de 
adulteriis, he as husband should have made 
known the crime of his wife to the pretor and 
have had her punished. He had been one of 
those who had always most vehemently de- 
nounced the nobility for their weakness in the 
enforcement of this law. Now that his own 
wife had fallen under the provisions of the 
terrible statute, to which so many other women 
had been forced to submit, the moment had 
come to give the weak that example of uncon- 
querable firmness which he had so often de- 
manded of others. But Julia was the daughter 
^ 89 



THE WOMEN OF THE CESARS 

of Augustus. Could he call down, without the 
consent of Augustus, so terrible a scandal upon 
the first house of the empire, render its daugh- 
ter infamous, and drive her into exile? Au- 
gustus, though he desired his daughter to be 
more prudent and serious, yet loved and pro- 
tected her; above all, he disliked dangerous 
scandal, and Julia dared to do whatever she 
wished, knowing herself invulnerable under 
his protection and his love. 

To this hard and false situation Tiberius, 
fuming with rage, had to adjust himself. He 
lived in a separate apartment, keeping up with 
Julia only the relations necessary to save ap- 
pearances, but he could not divorce her, much 
less publish her guilt. The situation grew still 
worse when political discontent began to use 
for its own ends the discord between Julia and 
Tiberius. Tiberius had many enemies among 
the nobility, especially among the young men 
of his own age; partly because his rapid, bril- 
liant career had aroused much jealousy, partly 
because his conservative, traditionalist tenden- 
cies toward authority and militarism disturbed 

90 



LIVIA AND JULIA 



many of them. More and more among the no- 
bility there was increasing the desire for a mild 
and easy-going government which should 
allow them to enjoy their privileges without 
hardship and which should not be too severe 
in imposing its duties upon them. 

On the other hand, Julia was most ambitious. 
Since, after the disagreements with Tiberius 
had broken out, she could no longer hope to be 
the powerful wife of the first person of the 
empire after Augustus, she sought compensa- 
tion. Thus there formed about Julia a party 
which sought in every way to ruin the lofty 
position which Tiberius occupied in the state, 
by setting up against him Caius Caesar, the son 
of Julia by Agrippa, whom Augustus had 
adopted and of whom he was very fond. In 
6 B.C., Caius Caesar was only fourteen years old, 
but at that period an agitation was set on foot 
whereby, through a special privilege conceded 
to him by the senate, he was to be named con- 
sul for the year of Rome 754, when Caius 
should have reached twenty. This was a 
manoeuver of the Julian party to attract popu- 

91 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

lar attention to the youth, to prepare a rival 
for Tiberius in his quality as principal collabo- 
rator of Augustus, and to gain a hold upon the 
future head of the state. 

The move was altogether very bold; for this 
nomination of a child consul contradicted all 
the fundamental principles of the Roman con- 
stitution, and it would probably have been 
fatal to the party which evolved it, had not the 
indignant rage of Tiberius assured its triumph. 
Tiberius opposed this law, which he took as an 
offense, and he wished Augustus to oppose it, 
and at the outset Augustus did so. But then, 
either because Julia was able to bend him to 
her desires or because in the senate there was 
in truth a strong party which supported it out 
of hatred for Tiberius, Augustus at last 
yielded, seeking to placate Tiberius with other 
compensations. But Tiberius was too proud 
and violent an aristocrat to accept compensa- 
tions and indignantly demanded permission to 
retire to Rhodes, abandoning all the public 
offices which he exercised. He certainly hoped 
to make his loss felt, for indeed Rome needed 

92 




Froii; the paintiuy by L. Alma Tadeiiia 

A RECEPTION AT LIVIA'S VILLA 

The scene evidently is at Livia's country palace at Prima Porta. Agrippa is seen 
descending the steps to be received by Augustus and Livia (who are not shown in 
the picture). The original of the statue of Augustus, here shown, was found in 
the ruins of Livia's villa close to the flight of marble steps and its base. The 
remains of the steps and the base of the statue are standing to-day at Prima Porta 



LIVIA AND JULIA 



him. But he was mistaken. This act of Ti- 
berius, was severely judged by public opinion 
as a reprisal upon the public for a private of- 
fense. Augustus became angry with him and 
in his absence all his enemies took courage and 
hurled themselves against him. The honors to 
Caius Caesar were approved amid general en- 
thusiasm and the Julian party triumphed all 
along the line; it reached the height of power 
and popularity, while Tiberius was constrained 
to content himself with the idle life of a private 
person at Rhodes. 

But at Rome Livia still remained. From that 
moment began the mortal duel between Livia 
and Julia. 



95 



Ill 

THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA 

TIBERIUS had now broken with Augustus, 
he had lost the support of public opinion, 
he was hated by the majority of the senate. At 
Rhodes he soon found himself, therefore, in 
the awkward position of one who through a 
false move has played into the hands of his 
enemies and sees no way of recovering his po- 
sition. It had been easy to leave Rome; to 
reenter it was difficult, and in all probability 
his fortune would have been forever compro- 
mised, and he would never have become em- 
peror, had it not been for the fact that in the 
midst of this general defection two women 
remained faithful. They were his mother, 
Livia, and his sister-in-law, Antonia, the widow 
of that brother Drusus who, dying in his youth, 
had carried to his grave the hopes of Rome. 
Antonia was the daughter of the emperor's 

96 



THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA 

sister Octavia and of Mark Antony, the famous 
triumvir whose name remains forever linked 
in story v^ith that of Cleopatra. This daughter 
of Antony was certainly the noblest and the 
gentlest of all the women who appear in the 
lugubrious and tragic history of the family of 
the Caesars. Serious, modest, and even-tem- 
pered, she was likewise endowed with beauty 
and virtue, and she brought into the family and 
into its struggles a spirit of concord, serenity 
of mind, and sweet reasonableness, though 
they could not always prevail against the vio- 
lent passions and clashing interests of those 
about her. As long as Drusus lived, Drusus 
and Antonia had been for the Romans the 
model of the devoted pair of lovers, and their 
tender affection had become proverbial; yet 
the Roman multitude, always given to admir- 
ing the descendants of the great families, was 
even more deeply impressed by the beauty, the 
virtue, the sweetness, the modesty, and the re- 
serve of Antonia. After the death of Drusus, 
she did not wish to marry again, even though 
the Lex de maritandis ordinibus made it a duty. 

97 



THE WOMEN OF THE CiESARS 

"Young and beautiful," wrote Valerius Maxi- 
mus, "she withdrew to a life of retirement in 
the company of Livia, and the same bed which 
had seen the death of the youthful husband 
saw his faithful spouse grow old in an austere 
widowhood." Augustus and the people were 
so touched by this supreme proof of fidelity to 
the memory of the ever-cherished husband 
that by the common consent of public opinion 
she was relieved of the necessity of remarry- 
ing; and Augustus himself, who had always 
carefully watched over the observance of the 
marital law in his own family, did not dare 
insist. Whether living at her villa of Bauli, 
where she spent the larger part of her year, or 
at Rome, the beautiful widow gave her atten- 
tion to the bringing up of her three children^ 
Germanicus, Livilla, and Claudius. Ever since 
the death of Octavia, she had worshiped Livia 
as a mother and lived in the closest intimacy 
with her, and, withdrawn from public life, she 
attempted now to bring a spirit of peace into 
the torn and tragic family. 
Antonia was very friendly with Tiberius, 

98 



THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA 

who, on his side, felt the deepest sympathy and 
respect for his beautiful and virtuous sister-in- 
law. It cannot be doubted, therefore, that in 
this crisis Antonia, who was bound to Livia by 
many ties, must have taken sides for Livia's 
son Tiberius. But Antonia was too gentle and 
mild to lead a faction in the struggle which 
during these years began between the friends 
and the enemies of Tiberius, and that role was 
assumed by Livia, who possessed more 
strength and more authority. 

The situation grew worse and worse. Pub- 
lic opinion steadily became more hostile to 
Tiberius and more favorable to Julia and her 
elder son, and it was not long before they 
wished to give to her younger son, Lucius, the 
same honors which had already been bestowed 
upon his brother Gains. Private interest soon 
allied itself with the hatred and rancor against 
Tiberius; and scarcely had he departed when 
the senate increased the appropriation for pub- 
lic supplies and public games. All those who 
profited by these appropriations were natu- 
rally interested in preventing the return of 

99 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^E-SARS 

Tiberius, who was notorious for his opposition 
to all useless expenditures. Any measure, how- 
ever dishonest, was therefore considered 
proper, provided only it helped to ruin Ti- 
berius; and his enemies had recourse to every 
art and calumny, among other things actually 
accusing him of conspiracies against Augustus. 
Even for a woman as able and energetic as 
Livia it was an arduous task to struggle against 
the inclinations of Augustus, against public 
opinion, against the majority of the senate, 
against private interest, and against Julia and 
her friends. Indeed, four years passed during 
which the situation of Tiberius and his party 
grew steadily worse, while the party of Julia 
increased in power. 

Finally the party of Tiberius resolved to at- 
tempt a startlingly bold move. They decided 
to cripple the opposition by means of a terrible 
scandal in the very person of Julia. The Lex 
Julia de adulteriis, framed by Augustus in the 
year 18, authorized any citizen to denounce an 
unfaithful wife before the judges, if the hus- 
band and father should both refuse to make 

100 



THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA 

the accusation. This law, which was binding 
upon all Roman citizens, was therefore appli- 
cable even to the daughter of Augustus, the 
widow of Agrippa, the mother of Gains and 
Lucius Caesar, those two youths in whom were 
centered the hopes of the republic. She had 
violated the Lex Julia and she had escaped the 
penalties which had been visited on many other 
ladies of the aristocracy only because no one 
had dared to call down this scandal upon the 
first family of the empire. The party of Tibe- 
rius, protected and guided by Livia, at last haz- 
arded this step. 

It is impossible to say what part Livia played 
in this terrible tragedy. It is certain that either 
she or some other influential personage suc- 
ceeded in gaining possession of the proofs of 
Julia's guilt and brought them to Augustus, 
threatening to lay them before the pretor and 
to institute proceedings if he did not discharge 
his duty. Augustus found himself constrained 
to apply to himself his own terrible law. He 
himself had decreed that if the husband, as 
was then the case of Tiberius, could not accuse 

101 



THE WOMEN OF THE CESARS 

a faithless woman, the father must do so. It 
was his law, and he had to bow to it in order to 
avoid scandals and worse consequences. He 
exiled Julia to the little island of Pandataria, 
and at the age of thirty-seven the brilliant, 
pleasing, and voluptuous young woman who 
had dazzled Rome for many years was com- 
pelled to disappear from the metropolis for- 
ever and retire to an existence on a barren 
island. She was cut off by the implacable ha- 
tred of a hostile party and by the inexorable 
cruelty of a law framed by her own father! 

The exile of Julia marks the moment when 
the fortunes of Tiberius and Livia, which had 
been steadily losing ground for four years, be- 
gan to revive, though not so rapidly as Livia 
and Tiberius had probably expected. Julia 
preserved, even in her misfortune, many faith- 
ful friends and a great popularity. For a long 
time popular demonstrations were held in her 
favor at Rome, and many busied themselves 
tenaciously to obtain her pardon from Augus- 
tus, all of which goes to prove that the horrible 
infamies which were spread about her were 

102 






From the bust now in the Vatican, Rome 

MARK ANTONY 



THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA 

the inventions of enemies. Julia had broken 
the Lex J alia, — so much is certain, — but even if 
she had been guilty of an unfortunate act, she 
was not a monster, as her enemies wished to 
have it believed. She was a beautiful woman, 
as there had been before, as there are now, and 
as there will be hereafter, touched with human 
vices and with human virtues. 

As a matter of fact, her party, after it had 
recovered from the terrible shock of the scan- 
dal, quickly reorganized. Firm in its intention 
of having Julia pardoned, it took up the strug- 
gle again, and tried as far as it could to hinder 
Tiberius from returning to Rome and again 
taking part in political life, knowing well that 
if the husband once set foot in Rome, all hope 
of Julia's return would be lost. Only one of 
them could reenter Rome. It was either Ti- 
berius or Julia; and more furiously than ever 
the struggle between the two parties was waged 
about Augustus. 

Gains and Lucius Gsesar, Julia's two youthful 
sons, of whom Augustus was very fond, were 
the principal instruments with which the 

105 



THE WOMEN OF THE CiESARS 

enemies of Tiberius fought against the in- 
fluence of Livia over Augustus. Every effort 
was made to sow hatred and distrust between 
the two youths and Tiberius, to the end that it 
might become impossible to have them col- 
laborate with him in the government of the 
empire, and that the presence of Julia's sons 
should of necessity exclude that of her hus- 
band. A further ally was soon found in the 
person of another child of Julia and Agrippa, 
the daughter who has come down into history 
under the name of the Younger Julia. Augus- 
tus had conceived as great a love for her as for 
the two sons, and there was no doubt that she 
would aid with every means in her power the 
party averse to Tiberius; for her mother's in- 
stincts of liberty, luxury, and pleasure were 
also inherent in her. Married to L. iEmilius 
Paulus, the son of one of the greatest Roman 
families, she had early assumed in Rome a 
position which made her, like her mother, the 
antithesis of Livia. She, too, gathered about 
her, as the elder Julia had done, a court of 
elegant youths, men of letters, and poets, — 

106 



THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA 

Ovid was of the number, — and with this group 
she hoped to be able to hold the balance of 
power in the government against that coterie 
of aged senators who paid court to Livia. She, 
too, took advantage of the good-will of her 
grandfather, just as her mother had done, and 
in the shadow of his protection she displayed 
an extravagance which the laws did not permit, 
but which, on this account, was all the more 
admired by the enemies of the old Roman 
Puritanism. As though openly to defy the 
sumptuary law of Augustus, she built herself 
a magnificent villa; and, if we dare believe 
tradition, it was not long before she, too, had 
violated the very law which had proved dis- 
astrous to her mother. 

Thus, even after the departure of Julia, her 
three children, Gains, Lucius, and Julia the 
Younger, constituted in Rome an alliance 
which was sufficiently powerful to contest 
every inch of ground with the party of Livia; 
for they had public opinion in their favor, they 
enjoyed the support of the senate, and they 
played upon the weakness of Augustus. In the 

107 



THE WOMEN OF THE CiESARS 

year 2 a.d., after four years of exhaustive ef- 
forts spent in struggle and intrigue, all that 
Livia had been able to obtain was the mere 
permission that Tiberius might return to 
Rome, under the conditions, however, that he 
retire to private life, that he give himself up to 
the education of his son, and that he in no wise 
mingle in public affairs. The condition of the 
empire was growing worse on every side; the 
finances were disordered, the army was disor- 
ganized, and the frontiers were threatened, for 
revolt was raising its head in Gaul, in Panno- 
nia, and especially in Germany. Every day the 
situation seemed to demand the hand of Ti- 
berius, who, now in the prime of life, was rec- 
ognized as one of the leading administrators 
and the first general of the empire. But, for 
all Livia*s insistence, Augustus refused to call 
Tiberius back into the government. The Julii 
were masters of the state, and held the Claudii 
at a distance. 

Perhaps Tiberius would never have returned 
to power in Rome had not chance aided him in 
the sudden taking off, in a strange and unfore- 

108 



THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA 

seen manner, of Gains and Lucius Caesar. The 
latter died at Marseilles, following a brief ill- 
ness, shortly after the return of Tiberius to 
Rome, August 29, in the year 2 a.d. It was a 
great grief to Augustus, and, twenty months 
after, was followed by another still more 
serious. In February of the year 4, Gains also 
died, in Lycia, of a wound received in a skir- 
mish. These two deaths were so premature, so 
close to each other, and so opportune for Ti- 
berius, that posterity has refused to see in them 
simply one of the many mischances of life. 
Later generations have tried to believe that 
Livia had a hand in these fatalities. Yet he 
who understands life at all knows that it is 
easier to imagine and suspect romantic poison- 
ings of this sort than it is to carry them out. 
Even leaving the character of Livia out of con- 
sideration, it is difficult to imagine how she 
would have dared, or have been able, to poison 
the two youths at so great a distance from 
Rome, one in Asia, the other in Gaul, by means 
of a long train of accomplices, and this at a 
moment when the family of Augustus was 
« 111 



THE WOMEN OF THE CiESARS 

divided by many hatreds and every member 
was suspected, spied upon, and watched by a 
hostile party. Furthermore, it would have 
been necessary to carry this out at a time when 
the example of Julia proved to all that relation- 
ship to Augustus was not a sufficient defense 
against the rigors of the law and the severity of 
public opinion when roused by any serious 
crime. Besides, it is a recognized fact that peo- 
ple are always inclined to suspect a crime when- 
ever a man prominent in the public eye dies 
before his time. At Turin, for example, there 
still lives a tradition among the people that 
Cavour was poisoned, some say by the order of 
Napoleon HI, others by the Jesuits, simply be- 
cause his life was suddenly cut off, at the age 
of fifty-two, at the moment when Italy had 
greatest need of him. Indeed, even to-day we 
are impressed when we see in the family of 
Augustus so many premature deaths of young 
men; but precisely because these untimely 
deaths are frequent we come to see in them the 
predestined ruin of a worn-out race in history. 
All ancient families at a certain moment ex- 

112 



THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA 

haust themselves. This is the reason why no 
aristocracy has been able to endure for long 
unless continually renewed, and why all those 
that have refused to take in new blood have 
failed from the face of the earth. There is no 
serious reason for attributing so horrible a 
crime to a woman who was venerated by the 
best men of her time; and the fables which the 
populace, always faithful to Julia, and there- 
fore hostile to Livia, recounted on this score, 
and which the historians of the succeeding age 
collected, have no decisive value. 

The deaths of Gains and Lucius Caesar were 
therefore a great good fortune for Tiberius, 
because it determined his return to power. The 
situation of the empire was growing worse on 
every hand; Germany was in the midst of re- 
volt, and it was necessary to turn the army over 
to vigorous hands. Augustus, old and irreso- 
lute, still hesitated, fearing the dislike which 
was brewing both in the senate and among the 
people against the too dictatorial Tiberius. At 
last, however, he was forced to yield. 

The more serious, more authoritative, more 

113 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

ancient party of the senatorial nobility, in ac- 
cord with Livia and headed by a nephew of 
Pompey, Cnaeus Cornelius Cinna, forced him 
to recall Tiberius, threatening otherwise to 
have recourse to some violent measures the 
exact character of which we do not know. The 
unpopularity of Tiberius was a source of con- 
tinual misgivings to the aging Augustus, and it 
was only through this threat of a yet greater 
danger that they finally overcame his hesita- 
tion. On June 26, in the fourth year of our 
era, Augustus adopted Tiberius as his son, and 
had conferred upon him for ten years the office 
of tribune, thus making him his colleague. Ti- 
berius returned to power, and, in accordance 
with the wishes of Augustus, adopted as his 
son Germanicus, the elder son of Drusus and 
Antonia, his faithful friend. He was an intel- 
ligent, active lad of whom all entertained the 
highest hopes. 

On his return to power, Tiberius, together 
with Augustus, took measures for reorganizing 
the army and the state, and sought to bring 
about by means of new marriages and acts of 

114 




l-'ruui the statue fu: 



Nazionale, Naples 



TIBERIUS, ELDER SON OF LIVIA AND 
STEPSON OF AUGUSTUS 

Augustus, lacking a male heir, first adopted his younger stepson 
Drusus, who died 9 B. c. owing to a fall from his horse. In 4 A. D. he 
adopted Tiberius, and was succeeded by him as Emperor in 14 A. d. 



THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA 

clemency a closer union between the Julian 
and Claudian branches of the family, then bit- 
terly divided by the violent struggles of recent 
years. The terms of Julia's exile were made 
easier; Germanicus married Agrippina, an- 
other daughter of Julia and Agrippa, and a 
sister of Julia the Younger; the widow of Gains 
Caesar, LiviHa, sister of Germanicus and daugh- 
ter of Antonia, was given to Drusus, the son of 
Tiberius, a young man born in the same year 
as Germanicus. Drusus, despite certain de- 
fects, such as irascibility and a marked fond- 
ness for pleasure, gave evidence that he 
possessed the requisite qualities of a statesman 
— firmness, sound judgment, and energy. The 
policy which dictated these marriages was al- 
ways the same — to make of the family of Au- 
gustus one formidable and united body, so that 
it might constitute the solid base of the entire 
government of the empire. But, alas! wise as 
were the intentions, the ferments of discord 
and the unhappiness of the times prevailed 
against them. Too much had been hoped for 
in recalling Tiberius to power. During the ten 

117 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

years of senile government, the empire had 
been reduced to a state of utter disorder. The 
measures planned by Tiberius for reestablish- 
ing the finances of the state roused the liveliest 
discontent among the v^ealthy classes in Italy, 
and again excited their hatred against him. In 
the year 6 a.d., the great revolt of Pannonia 
broke out and for a moment filled Italy with 
unspeakable terror. In an instant of mob 
fury, they even came to fear that the peninsula 
would be invaded and Rome besieged by the 
barbarians of the Danube. Tiberius came to 
the rescue, and with patience and coolness put 
down the insurrection, not by facing it in open 
conflict, but by drawing out the war to such a 
length as to weary the enemy, a method both 
safe and wise, considering the unreliable char- 
acter of the troops at his command. But at 
Rome, once the fear had subsided, the long 
duration of the war became a new cause for 
dissatisfaction and anger, and offered to many 
a pretext for venting their long-cherished ha- 
tred against Tiberius, who was accused of 
being afraid, of not knowing how to end the 

118 



THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA 

war, and of drawing it out for motives of per- 
sonal ambition. The party averse to Tiberius 
again raised its head and resorted once more 
to its former policy — that of urging on Ger- 
manicus against Tiberius. The former was 
young, ambitious, bold, and would have pre- 
ferred daring strokes and a war quickly con- 
cluded. It is certain that there would have 
risen then and there a Germanican and a Ti- 
berian party, if Augustus, on this occasion, had 
not energetically sustained Tiberius from 
Rome. But the situation again became strained 
and full of uncertainty. 

In the midst of these conflicts and these 
fears, a new scandal broke out in the family of 
Augustus. The Younger Julia, like her mother, 
allowed herself to be caught in violation of the 
Lex Julia de adulteriis, and she also was com- 
pelled to take the road of exile. In what man- 
ner and at whose instance the scandal was 
disclosed we do not know; we do know, how- 
ever, that Augustus was very fond of his 
granddaughter, whence we can assume that in 
this moment of turbid agitation, when so much 

119 



THE WOMEN OF THE C.ESARS 

hatred was directed against his family and his 
house, and when so many forces were uniting 
to overthrow Tiberius again, notwithstanding 
the fact that he had saved the empire, Augustus 
felt that he must a second time submit to his 
own law. He did not dare contend with the 
puritanical party, with the more conservative 
minority in the senate, — the friends of Tibe- 
rius, — over this second victim in his family. 
Without a doubt everything possible was done 
to hush up the scandal, and there would 
scarcely have come down to us even a summary 
notice of the exile of the second Julia had it not 
been that among those exiled with her was the 
poet Ovid, who was to fill twenty centuries 
with his laments and to bring them to the ears 
of the latest generations. 

Ovid's exile is one of those mysteries of his- 
tory which has most keenly excited the curiosity 
of the ages. Ovid himself, without knowing it, 
has rendered it more acute by his prudence in 
not speaking more clearly of the cause of his 
exile, making only rare allusions to it, which 
may be summed up in his famous words, car- 

120 



THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA 

men et error. It is for this reason that posterity 
has for twenty centuries been asking itself 
what was this error which sent the exquisite 
poet away to die among the barbarous Getae on 
the frozen banks of the Danube; and naturally 
they have never compassed his secret. But if, 
therefore, it is impossible to say exactly what 
the error was which cost Ovid so dearly, it is 
possible, on the other hand, to explain that 
unique and famous episode in the history of 
Rome to which, after all, Ovid owes a great 
part of his immortality. He was not the vic- 
tim, as has been too often repeated, of a caprice 
of despotism; and therefore he cannot be com- 
pared with any of the many Russian writers 
whom the administration, through fear and 
hatred, deports to Siberia without definite rea- 
son. Certainly the error of Ovid lay in his 
having violated some clause of the Lex Julia de 
adulteriis, which, as we know, was so compre- 
hensive in its provisions that it considered as 
accessories to the crime those guilty of various 
acts and deeds which, judged even with mod- 
ern rigor and severity, would seem reprehen- 

121 



THE WOMEN OF THE C.ESARS 



sible, to be sure, but not deserving of such 
terrible punishment. Ovid was certainly in- 
volved under one of these clauses,-^which one 
we do not, and never shall, know, — but his 
error, whether serious or light, was not the true 
cause of his condemnation. It was the pretext 
used by the more conservative and puritanical 
part of Roman society to vent upon him a long- 
standing grudge the true motives of which lay 
much deeper. 

What was the standing of this poet of the 
gay, frivolous, exquisite ladies whom they 
wished to send into exile? He was the author 
of that graceful, erotic poetry who, through 
the themes which he chose for his elegant 
verses, had encouraged the tendencies toward 
luxury, diversion, and the pleasures which had 
transformed the austere matron of a former 
day into an extravagant and undisciplined 
creature given to voluptuousness; the poet who 
had gained the admiration of women especially 
by flattering their most dangerous and per- 
verse tendencies. The puritanical party hated 
and combatted this trend of the newer genera- 

122 



THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA 

tions, and therefore, also, the poetry of Ovid 
on account of its disastrous effects upon the 
women, whom it weaned from the virtues most 
prized in former days — frugality, simplicity, 
family affection, and purity of life. The 
Roman aristocracy did not recognize the right 
of absolute literary freedom which is acknow- 
ledged by many modern states, in which wri- 
ters and men of letters have acquired a strong 
political influence. The theory, held by many 
countries to-day that any publication is justifi- 
able, provided it be a work of art, was not ac- 
cepted by the Romans in power. On the 
contrary, they were convinced that an idea or 
a sentiment, dangerous in itself, became still 
more harmful when artistically expressed. 
Therefore Rome had always known the exis- 
tence of a kind of police supervision of ideas 
and of literary forms, exercised through va- 
rious means by the ruling aristocracy, and 
especially in reference to women, who consti- 
tuted that element of social life in which virtue 
and purity of customs are of the greatest con- 
sequence. The Roman ladies of the aristoc- 

123 



THE WOMEN OF THE CiESARS 

racy, as we have seen, received considerable 
instruction. They read the poets and philos- 
ophers, and precisely for this reason there was 
always at Rome a strong aversion to light and 
immoral literature. If books had circulated 
among men only, the poetry of Ovid would 
perhaps not have enjoyed the good fortune of 
a persecution which was to focus upon it the 
attention of posterity. The greater liberty con- 
ceded to women thus placed upon society an 
even greater reserve in the case of its literature. 
This Ovid learned to his cost when he was 
driven into exile because his books gave too 
much delight to too many ladies at Rome. By 
the order of Augustus these books were re- 
moved from the libraries, which did not hinder 
their coming down to us entire, while many a 
more serious work — like Livy's history, for 
example— has been either entirely or in large 
part lost. 

After the fall of the second Julia up to the 
time of his death, which occurred August 23, 
in the year 14 a.d., Augustus had no further 

124 





From the statue formerly in Pompeii, now in the Museo Nazionale, Naples 

DRUSUS, THE YOUNGER BROTHER OF TIBERIUS 



THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA 

serious griefs over the ladies of his family. 
The great misfortune of Ihe last years of his 
government v^as a public misfortune — the de- 
feat of Varus and the loss of Germany. But 
with what sadness must he have looked back in 
the last weeks of his long life upon the history 
of his family! All those whom he had loved 
were torn from him before their time by a 
cruel destiny: Drusus, Caius, and Lucius Caesar 
by death; the Julias by the cruelty of the law 
and by an infamy worse than death. The 
unique grandeur to which he had attained had 
not brought fortune to his family. He was old, 
almost alone, a weary survivor among the 
tombs of those dear to him who had been un- 
timely lost through fate, and with the still 
sadder memories of those who had been buried 
in a living grave of infamy. His only asso- 
ciates were Tiberius, with whom he had be- 
come reconciled; Antonia, his sweet and highly 
respected daughter-in-law; and Livia, the 
woman whom destiny had placed at his side in 
one of the most critical moments of his life, 
the faithful companion through fifty -two 

127 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

years of his varied and wonderful fortune. We 
can therefore understand why it was that, as 
the historians tell us, the last words of the old 
emperor should have been a tender expression 
of gratitude to his faithful wife. "Farewell, 
farewell, Livial Remember our long union!" 
With these words, rendering homage to the 
wife whom custom and the law had made the 
faithful and loving companion, and not the 
docile slave, of her husband, he ended his life 
like a true Roman. 

If the family of Augustus had undergone 
grievous vicissitudes during his life, its situa- 
tion became even more dangerous after his 
death. The historian who sets out with the 
preconceived notion that Augustus founded a 
monarchy, and imagines that his family was 
destined to enjoy the privileges which in all 
monarchies are accorded the sovereign's house, 
will never arrive at a complete understanding 
of the story of the first enipire. His family did, 
to be sure, alw^ays enjoy a privileged status, if 
not at law, at least in fact, and through the very 
force of circumstances; but it was not for 

128 



THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA 

naught that Rome had been for many centuries 
an aristocratic republic in which all the fami- 
lies of the nobility had considered themselves 
equal, and had been subject to the same laws. 
The aristocracy avenged itself upon the im- 
perial family for the privileges which the lofty 
dignity of its head assured it by giving it hatred 
instead of respect. They suspected and calum- 
niated all of its members, and with a malicious 
joy subjected them, whenever possible, to the 
common laws and even maltreated with par- 
ticular ferocity those who by chance fell under 
the provisions of any statute. As a compensa- 
tion for the privileges which the royal family 
enjoyed, they had to assume the risk of receiv- 
ing the harshest penalties of the laws. If any 
of them, therefore, fell under the rigor of these 
laws, the senatorial aristocracy especially was 
ever eager to enjoy the atrocious satisfaction of 
seeing one of the favored tortured as much as 
or more than the ordinary man. There is no 
doubt, for example, that the two Julias were 
more severely punished and disgraced than 
other ladies of the aristocracy guilty of the 

129 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

same crime. And Augustus was forced to 
waive his affection for them in order that it 
might not be said, particularly in the senate, 
that his relatives enjoyed special favors and 
that Augustus made laws only for others. 

Yet as long as Augustus lived, he was a suffi- 
cient protection for his relatives. He was, 
especially in the last twenty years of his life, 
the object of an almost religious veneration. 
The great and stormy epoch out of which he 
had risen, the extraordinary fortune which had 
assisted him, his long reign, the services both 
real and imaginary which he had rendered the 
empire— all had conferred upon him such an 
authority that envy laid aside its most poison- 
ous darts before him. Out of respect for him 
even his family was not particularly calumni- 
ated or maltreated, save now and then in mo- 
ments of great irritation, as when the two 
Julias were condemned. But after his death 
the situation grew considerably worse; for Ti- 
berius, although he was a man of great capacity 
and merit, a sagacious administrator and a 
valiant general, did not enjoy the sympathy 

130 




STATUE OF A YOUNG ROMAN WOMAN 



THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA 

and respect which had been accorded to Au- 
gustus. Rather was he hated by those who had 
for a long time sided with Caius and Lucius 
Caesar and who formed a considerable portion 
of the senate and the aristocracy. It was not 
the spontaneous admiration of the senate and 
of the people, but the exigencies of the situa- 
tion, which had made him master of the gov- 
ernment when Augustus died. The empire 
was at war with the Germans, and the Pan- 
nonico-Illyrian provinces were in revolt, and 
it was necessary to place at the head of the 
empire a man who should strike terror to the 
hearts of the barbarians and who on occasion 
should be able to combat them. Tiberius, fur- 
thermore, was so well aware that the majority 
of the senate and the Roman people would sub- 
mit to his government only through force, that 
he had for a long time been in doubt whether 
to accept the empire or not, so completely did 
he understand that with so many enemies it 
would be difficult to rule. 

Under the government of Tiberius the im- 
perial family was surrounded by a much more 
' 133 



THE WOMEN OF THE C.ESARS 

intense and open hatred than under Augustus. 
One couple only proved an exception, Germani- 
cus and Agrippina, who were very sympathetic 
to the people. But right here began the first 
serious difficulties for Tiberius. Germanicus 
was twenty-nine years old when Tiberius took 
over the empire, and about him there began to 
form a party which by courting and flattering 
both him and his wife began to set him up 
against Tiberius. In this they were uncon- 
sciously aided by Agrippina. Unlike her sister 
Julia, she was a lady of blameless life; faith- 
fully in love with her husband; a true Roman 
matron, such as tradition had loved; chaste and 
fruitful, who at the age of twenty-six had al- 
ready borne nine children, of whom, however, 
six had died. But Agrippina was to show that 
in the house of Augustus, in those tumultuous, 
strange times, virtue was not less dangerous 
than vice, though in another way and for dif- 
ferent reasons. She was so proud of her fidelity 
to her husband and of the admiration which 
she aroused at Rome that all the other defects 
of her character were exaggerated and in- 

134 



THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA 

creased by her excessive pride in her virtue. 
And among these defects should be counted 
a great ambition, a kind of harum-scarum and 
tumultuous activity, an irreflective impetuosity 
of passion, and a dangerous lack of balance 
and judgment. Agrippina was not evil; she 
was ambitious, violent, intriguing, imprudent, 
and thoughtless, and therefore could easily 
adapt her own feelings and interests to what 
seemed expedient. She had much influence 
over her husband, whom she accompanied 
upon all his journeys; and out of the great love 
she bore him, in which her own ambition had 
its part, she urged him on to support that hid- 
den movement which was striving to oppose 
Germanicus to the emperor. 

That two parties were not formed was due 
very largely to the fact that Germanicus was 
sufficiently reasonable not to allow himself to 
be carried too far by the current which fa- 
vored him, and possibly also to the fact that 
during the entire reign of Tiberius his mother 
Antonia was the most faithful and devoted 
friend of the emperor. After his divorce from 

135 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

Julia, Tiberius had not married again, and the 
offices of tenderness which a wife should have 
given him were discharged in part by his 
mother, but largely by his sister-in-law. No 
one exercised so much influence gs Antonia 
over the diffident and self -centered spirit of the 
emperor. Whoever wished to obtain a favor 
from him could do no better than to intrust his 
cause to Antonia. There is no doubt, therefore, 
that Antonia checked her son, and in his society 
counterbalanced the influence of his wife. 

But even if two parties were not formed, it 
was not long before other difficulties arose. 
Discord soon made itself felt between Livia 
and Agrippina. More serious still was the fact 
that Germanicus, who, after the death of Au- 
gustus, had been sent as a legate to Gaul, 
initiated a German policy contrary to the in- 
structions given him by Tiberius. This was 
due partly to his own impetuous temperament 
and partly to the goadings of his wife and the 
flatterers who surrounded him. Tiberius, 
whom the Germans knew from long experi- 
ence, no longer wished to molest them. The 

136 




. photograph by Brojji of the bust in the 
Museo Nazioiiale, Naples 



A ROMAN GIRL OF THE TIME OF 
THE C^SARS 



THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA 

revolt of Arminius proved that when their in- 
dependence was threatened by Rome they were 
capable of uniting and becoming dangerous; 
when left to themselves they destroyed one an- 
other by continual wars. It was advisable, 
therefore, according to Tiberius, not to attack 
or molest them, but at the proper moment to 
fan the flames of their continual dissensions 
and wars in order that, while destroying them- 
selves, they should leave the empire in peace. 
This wise and prudent policy might please a 
seasoned soldier like Tiberius, who had already 
won his laurels in many wars and who had 
risen to the pinnacle of glory and power. It 
did not please the pushing and eager youth 
Germanicus, who was anxious to distinguish 
himself by great and brilliant exploits, and 
who had at his side, as a continual stimulus, an 
ambitious and passionate wife, surrounded by 
a court of flatterers. Germanicus, on his own 
initiative, crossed the Rhine and took up the 
offensive again all along the line, attacking the 
most powerful of the German tribes one after 
the other in important and successful expedi- 

139 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

tions. At Rome this bold move was naturally 
looked upon with pleasure, especially by the 
numerous enemies of Tiberius, either because 
boldness in politics rather than prudence al- 
ways pleases those who have nothing to lose, 
or because it was felt that the glory which 
accrued to Germanicus might offend the em- 
peror. And Tiberius, though he did disap- 
prove, allowed his adopted son to continue for 
a time, doubtless in order that he might not 
have to shock public opinion and that it might 
not seem that he wished to deprive the youth- 
ful Germanicus of the glory which he was 
gaining for himself. 

He was nevertheless resolved not to allow 
Germanicus to involve Rome too deeply in 
German affairs, and when it seemed to him 
that the youth had fittingly proved his prowess 
and had made the enemies of Rome feel its 
power sufficiently, he recalled him and in his 
stead sent Drusus, who was his real, and not his 
adopted, son. But this recall did not at all 
please the party of Germanicus, who were loud 
and bitter in their recriminations. They began 

140 



THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA 

to murmur that Tiberius was jealous of Ger- 
manicus and his popularity; that he had re- 
called him in order to prevent his winning 
glory by an immortal achievement. Tiberius 
so little thought of keeping Germanicus from 
using his brilliant qualities in the service of 
Rome that shortly after, in the year 18 a.d., he 
sent him into the Orient to introduce order into 
Armenia, which was shaken by internal dissen- 
sions, and he gave him a command there not 
less important than the one of which he had 
deprived him. At the same time he was unwill- 
ing to intrust things entirely to the judgment 
of Germanicus, in whom he recognized a young 
man of capacity and valor, but, nevertheless, a 
young man influenced by an imprudent wife 
and incited by an irresponsible court of flatter- 
ers. For this reason he placed at his side an 
older and more experienced man in whom he 
had the fullest confidence — Cnseus Piso, a 
senator who belonged to one of the most illus- 
trious families in Rome. 

It was the duty of Cnaeus Piso to counsel, to 
restrain, and to aid the young Germanicus, and 

141 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

doubtless also to keep Tiberius informed of all 
that Germanicus was doing in the East. When 
we remember that Tiberius was responsible 
for the empire, no one will deny him the right 
of setting a guard upon the young man of 
thirty-three, into whose hands had been in- 
trusted many and serious interests. But 
though this idea was warrantable in itself, it 
became the source of great woe. Germanicus 
was offended, and, driven on by his friends, he 
broke with Piso. The latter had brought with 
him his wife Plancina, who was a close friend 
of Livia, just as Germanicus had brought 
Agrippina. The two wives fell to quarreling no 
less furiously than their husbands, and two 
parties were formed in the Orient, one for Piso 
and one for Germanicus, who accused each 
other of illegality, extortion, and assuming 
unwarranted powers; and each thought only of 
undoing what the other had accomplished. It 
is difficult to tell which of the two was right or 
in how far either was right or wrong, for the 
documents are too few and the account of Tac- 
itus, clouded by an undiscerning antipathy, 

142 



THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA 

sheds no light upon this dark secret. In any 
case, we are sure that Germanicus did not al- 
ways respect the laws and that he occasionally 
acted with a supreme heedlessness which now 
and then forced Tiberius to intervene person- 
ally, as he did on the occasion when Germani- 
cus left his province with Agrippina in order 
that, dressed like a Greek philosopher, he 
might make a tour of Egypt and see that coun- 
try, which then, as now, attracted the attention 
of persons of culture. But at that time, unlike 
the present, there was an ordinance of Augus- 
tus which forbade Roman senators to set foot 
in Egypt without special permission. As he 
had paid no attention to this prohibition, we 
need not be astonished if we find that Germani- 
cus did not respect as scrupulously as Tiberius 
wished all the laws which defined his powers 
and set limits to his authority. 

However that may be, the dissension be- 
tween Germanicus and Piso filled the entire 
Orient with confusion and disorder, and it was 
early echoed at Rome, where the party hostile 
to Tiberius continued to accuse him, out of 

143 



THE WOMEN OF THE CESARS 

motives of hatred and jealousy, of forever lay- 
ing new obstacles in the way of his adopted 
son. Livia, too, now no longer protected by 
Augustus, became a target for the accusations 
of a malevolent public opinion. It was said 
that she persecuted Germanicus out of hatred 
for Agrippina. Tiberius was much embar- 
rassed, being hampered by public opinion fa- 
vorable to Germanicus and at the same time 
desiring that his sons should set an example of 
obedience to the laws. 
_'p A sudden catastrophe still further compli- 
'^^ cated the situation. In 19 a.d. Germanicus was 
taken ill at Antioch. The malady was long and 
marked by periods of convalescence and re- 
lapses, but finally, like his father and like his 
brothers-in-law, Germanicus, too, succumbed 
to his destiny in the fullness of youth. At 
thirty-four, when life with her most winning 
smiles seemed to be stretching out her arms to 
him, he died. This one more untimely death 
brought to an abrupt end a most dangerous 
political struggle. Is it to be wondered at, then, 
that the people, whose imagination had been 

144 



THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA 

aroused, should have begun to murmur about 
poison? The party of Germanicus was driven 
to desperation by this death, which virtually 
ended its existence, and destroyed at a single 
stroke all the hopes of those who had seen in 
Germanicus the instrument of their future 
fortune. They therefore eagerly collected, em- 
bellished, and spread these rumors. Had 
Agrippina been a woman of any judgment or 
reflection, she would have been the first to see 
the absurdity of this foolish gossip; but as a 
matter of fact no one placed more implicit 
faith in such reports than she, now that afflic- 
tion had rendered her even more impetuous 
and violent. 

It was not long before every one at Rome 
had heard it said that Germanicus had been 
poisoned by Piso, acting, so it was intimated in 
whispers, at the bidding of Tiberius and Livia. 
Piso had been the tool of Tiberius; Plancina, 
the tool of Livia. The accusation is absurd; it 
is even recognized as such by Tacitus, who was 
actuated by a fierce hatred against Tiberius. 
We know from him how the accusers of Piso 

145 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

recounted that the poison had been drunk in a 
health at a banquet to which Piso had been 
invited by Germanicus and at which he was 
seated several places from his host; he was 
supposed to have poured the poison into his 
dishes in the presence of all the guests without 
any one having seen him I Tacitus himself 
says that every one thought this an absurd 
fable, and such every man of good sense will 
think it to-day. But hatred makes even intelli- 
gent persons believe fables even more absurd; 
the people favorable to Germanicus were em- 
bittered against Piso and would not listen to 
reason. All the enemies of Tiberius easily 
persuaded themselves that some atrocious 
mystery was hidden in this death and that, if 
they instituted proceedings against Piso, they 
might bring to light a scandal which would 
compromise the emperor himself. They even 
began to repeat that Piso possessed letters from 
Tiberius which contained the order to poison 
Germanicus. 

At last Agrippina arrived at Rome with the 
ashes of her husband, and she began with her 

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THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA 

usual vehemence to fill the imperial house, the 
senate, and all Rome with protests, impreca- 
tions, and accusations against Piso. The popu- 
lace, which admired her for her fidelity and 
love for her husband, was even more deeply 
stirred, and on every hand the cry was raised 
that an exemplary punishment ought to be 
meted out to so execrable a crime. 

If at first Piso had treated these absurd 
charges with haughty disdain, he soon per- 
ceived that the danger was growing serious and 
that it was necessary for him to hasten his re- 
turn to Rome, where a trial was now inevitable. 
One of Germanicus's friends had accused him; 
Agrippina, an unwitting tool in the hands of 
the emperor's enemies, every day stirred pub- 
lic opinion to still higher pitches of excitement 
through her grief and her laments; the party 
of Germanicus worked upon the senate and the 
people, and when Piso arrived at Rome he 
found that he had been abandoned by all. His 
hope lay in Tiberius, who knew the truth and 
who certainly desired that these wild notions 
be driven out of the popular mind. But Tibe- 

149 



THE WOMEN OF THE CiESARS 

rius was watched with the most painstaking 
malevolence. Any least action in favor of Piso 
would have been interpreted as a decisive 
proof that he had been the murderer's accom- 
plice and therefore wished to save him. In 
fact, it was being reported at Rome with ever- 
increasing insistence that at the trial Piso 
would show the letters of Tiberius. When the 
trial began, Livia, in the background, cleverly 
directed her thoughts to the saving of Plancina; 
but Tiberius could do no more for Piso than to 
recommend to the senate that they exercise the 
most rigorous impartiality. His noble speech 
on this occasion has been preserved for us by 
Tacitus. "Let them judge," he said, "without 
regard either for the imperial family or for the 
family of Piso." The admonition was useless, 
for his condemnation was a foregone conclu- 
sion, despite the absurdity of the charges. The 
enemies of Tiberius wished to force matters to 
the uttermost limit in the hope that the famous 
letters would have to be produced; and they 
acted with such frenzied hatred and excited 

150 



THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA 

public opinion to such a pitch that Piso killed 
himself before the end of the trial. 

The violence of Agrippina had sent an in- 
nocent victim to follow the shade of her young 
husband. Despite bitter opposition, the em- 
peror, through personal intervention, suc- 
ceeded in saving the wife, the son, and the 
fortune of Piso, whose enemies had wished to 
exterminate his house root and branch. Tibe- 
rius thus offered a further proof that he was 
one of the few persons at Rome who were 
capable in that trying and troubled time of 
passing judgment and of reasoning with calm. 



151 



IV 

TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA 

THE blackest and most tragic period in the 
life of Tiberius begins with the death of 
Germanicus and the terrible scandal of the suit 
against Piso. It was to pass into history as the 
worst period of the "Tiberian tyranny"; for it 
was at this time that the famous Lex de majes- 
tate^ (on high treason), which had not been 
applied under Augustus, came to be frequently 
invoked, and through its operation atrocious 
accusations, scandalous trials, and frightful 
condemnations were multiplied in Rome, to 

^There was in the Roman legal system no public prosecutor 
and virtually no police. Every Roman citizen was supposed 
to watch over the laws and see that they were not infringed. 
On his retirement from office, any governor or magistrate 
ran the risk of being impeached by some young aspirant to 
political honors, and not infrequently oratory, an art much 
cultivated by the Romans, triumphed over righteousness. 
In the earlier period the ground on which charges were 
usually brought was malversation; in the time of the empire 
they were also frequently brought under the above-men- 
tioned law de majestate. It has been said that this common 

152 




From a photograph by Anderson of the bust in the Museo Nazionale 

TIBERIUS 



TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA 

the terror of all. Many committed suicide in 
despair, and illustrious families were given 
over to ruin and infamy. 

Posterity still holds Tiberius to account for 
these tragedies; his cruel and suspicious tyr- 
anny is made responsible for these accusa- 
tions, for the suits which followed, and for the 
cruel condemnations in which they ended. It 
is said that every free mind which still remem- 
bered ancient Roman liberty gave him um- 
brage and caused him distress, and that he 
could suffer to have about him only slaves and 
hired assassins. But how far this is from the 
truth! How poorly the superficial judgment 
of posterity has understood the terrible tragedy 
of the reign of Tiberius! We always forget 



act of accusation, the birthright of the Roman citizen, the 
greatly esteemed palladium of Roman freedom, became the 
most convenient ^instrument of despotism. Since he who 
could bring a criminal to justice received a fourth of his 
possessions and estates, and since it brought the accuser 
into prominence, delation was recklessly indulged in by the 
unscrupulous,both for the sake of gain and as a means of vent- 
ing personal spite. The vice lay at the very heart of the 
Roman system, and was not the invention of Tiberius. He 
could hardly have done away with it without^overthrowing 
the whole Roman procedure. 

« 155 



THE WOMEN OF THE CiESARS 

that Tiberius was the next Roman emperor 
after Augustus; the first, that is, who had to 
bear the weight of the immense charge created 
by its founder, but without the immense pres- 
tige and respect which Augustus had derived 
from the extraordinary good fortune of his 
life, from the critical moment in which he had 
taken over the government, from the general 
opinion that he had ended the civil wars, 
brought peace back to an empire in travail, and 
saved Rome from the imminent ruin with 
which Egypt and Cleopatra had threatened it. 
For these reasons, while Augustus lived, the 
envy, jealousy, rivalry, and hatred of the new 
authority were held in check in his presence; 
but they were ever smoldering in the Roman 
aristocracy, which considered itself robbed of 
a part of its privileges, and always felt itself 
humiliated by this same authority, even when 
it was necessary to submit to it in cases of su- 
preme political necessity. But all this envy, all 
these jealousies, all these rivalries,— I have 
said it before, but it is well to repeat it, since 
the point is of capital importance for the un- 

156 



TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA 

derstanding of the whole history of the first 
empire, — were unleashed when Tiberius was 
exalted to the imperial dignity. 

What in reality was the situation of Tiberius 
after the death of Germanicus? We must grasp 
it well if we wish to understand not only the 
cruelty of the accusations brought under the 
law of high treason, but also the whole family 
policy followed by the second emperor. It was 
he who had to bear the burden of the whole 
state, of the finances, of the supplies, of the 
army, of the home and foreign policies; his 
was the will that propelled, and the mind that 
regulated, all. To him every portion of the 
empire and every social class had recourse, and 
it was to him that they looked for redress for 
every wrong or inconvenience or danger. It 
was to him that the legions looked for their 
regular stipend, the common people of Rome 
for abundant grain, the senate for the preser- 
vation of boundaries and of the internal order; 
the provinces looked to him for justice, and the 
sovereign allies or vassals for the solution of 
all internal difficulties in which they became 

157 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

involved. These responsibilities were so nu- 
merous and so great that Tiberius, like Augus- 
tus, attempted to induce the senate to aid him 
by assuming its share, according to the ancient 
constitution; but it was in vain, for the senate 
sought to shield itself, and always left to him 
the heavier portion. 

Is it conceivable that a man could have dis- 
charged so many responsibilities in times when 
the traditions of the government were only 
beginning to take form if he had not possessed 
a commanding personal authority, if he had 
not been the object of profound and general re- 
spect? Augustus would not have been able to 
govern so great an empire for more than forty 
years with such slight means had it not been 
for the fact, fortunate alike for himself and 
for the state, that he did enjoy this profound, 
sincere, and general admiration. Tiberius, on 
the other hand, who was already decidedly un- 
popular when he came into power, had seen 
this unpopularity increase during the first six 
years of his rule, despite all the efforts he had 
put forth to govern well. His solicitude about 

158 



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TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA 

maintaining a certain order within the state 
was described as haughtiness and harshness, 
his preoccupation lest the precarious resources 
of the government be dissipated in useless ex- 
penditures was dubbed avarice, and the pru- 
dence which had impelled him to restrain the 
rash policy of expansion and aggression which 
Germanicus had tried to initiate beyond the 
Rhine was construed as envy and surly malig- 
nity. Against all considerations of j ustice, logic, 
or good sense, this accusation was repeated, 
and now that destiny had cut down Germani- 
cus, he was accused sotto voce of being respon- 
sible for his death by many of the great 
families of Rome and even in senatorial cir- 
cles. They treated it as most natural that 
through jealousy he should poison his own 
nephew, his adopted son, the popular descen- 
dant of Drusus, the son of that virtuous Anto- 
nia who was his best and most faithful friend! 
But if, after having been accepted as true by 
the great families of Rome who sent it on its 
rounds, such a report had been allowed to cir- 
culate through the empire, how much author- 

161 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

ity would have been left to an emperor who 
was suspected of so terrible a crime? How 
could he have maintained discipline in the 
army, of which he was the head, and order 
among the people of Rome, of whom, as trib- 
une, he was the great protector? How could 
he have directed, urged on, or restrained the 
senate, of which he was, in the language of to- 
day, the president? The various Italian peo- 
ples from whom the army was drawn did 
not yet consider the head of the state a being 
so superior to the laws that it would be per- 
missible for him to commit crimes which were 
branded as disgustingly repulsive to ordinary 
human nature. 

No historian who understands the affairs of 
the world in general, and the story of the first 
century of the empire in particular, will at- 
tribute to ferocity or to the tyrannical spirit of 
Tiberius the increasingly harsh application of 
the Lex de majestate which followed the death 
of Germanicus and the trial of Piso. This 
harshness was the natural reaction against the 
delirium of atrocious calumnies against Ti- 

162 



TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA 

berius which raged in the aristocracy of that 
time and especially in the house of Agrippina. 
For she, in spite of the undeniably virtuous 
character of her private life, was influenced 
by friends who, for motives of political ad- 
vancement took advantage of her passions and 
inexperience. 

Too credulous of Tacitus, many writers have 
severely characterized the facility and the 
severity with which the senate condemned 
those accused under the Lex de majestate: they 
consider it an indication of ignoble servility 
toward the emperor. Yet we know very well 
that the Roman senate at that time was not 
composed merely of adulators and hirelings; 
it still included many men of intelligence and 
character. We can explain this severity only 
by admitting that there were many persons in 
the senate who judged that the emperor could 
not be left defenseless against the wild slan- 
ders of the great families, since these extrava- 
gant and insidious calumnies compromised 
not only the prestige and the fame of the ruler, 
but also the tranquillity, the power, and the 

163 



THE WOMEN OF THE CESARS 

integrity of the empire. Undoubtedly the Lex 
de majestate did give rise in time to false accu- 
sations, to private reprisals, and to unjust sen- 
tences of condemnation. Although it had been 
devised to defend the prestige of the state in 
the person of the magistrates who represented 
it, the law was frequently invoked by senators 
who wished to vent their fiercest personal ha- 
treds. Nor can it be denied that cupidity was 
the cause of many iniquitous calumnies di- 
rected against wealthy persons whose fortunes 
were coveted by their accusers. Yet we must go 
slow in accusing Tiberius of these excesses. 
Tacitus himself, who was averse to the emperor, 
recounts several incidents which show him in 
the act of intervening in trials of high treason 
for the benefit of the accused precisely for the 
purpose of hindering these excesses of private 
vengeance. The accounts which we have of 
many other trials are so brief and so biased 
that it is not fair for us to hazard a judgment. 

We do know, however, that after the death 
of Germanicus there was formed at Rome, in 
the imperial family and the senate, a party of 

164 



TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA 



Agrippina, which began an implacable war 
upon Tiberius, and that Tiberius, the so-called 
tyrant, was at the beginning very weak, unde- 
cided, and vacillating in his resistance to this 
new opposition. His opponents did not spare 
his person; they did their best to spread the 
belief that the emperor was a poisoner, and 
persecuted him relentlessly with this calumny; 
they were already pushing forward Nero, the 
first-born son of Germanicus, though in 21 a.d. 
he was only fourteen years old, in order that 
he might in time be made the rival of Tiberius. 
The latter, indeed, tried at first to moderate the 
charges of high treason, his supreme defense; 
he feigned that he did not know or did not see 
many things, and instead of resisting, he began 
to make long sojourns away from Rome, thus 
turning over the capital, in which the pretorian 
guard remained, to the calumnies of his ene- 
mies. Of all these enemies the most terrible 
was Agrippina, who, passionate, vehement, 
without judgment, abused in good faith both 
the relationship which protected her and the 
pity which her misfortune had aroused. She 

165 



THE WOMEN OF THE CiESARS 

allowed no occasion for taunting Tiberius with 
his pretended crime to escape her, using to this 
end not only words, but scenes and actions, 
which impressed the public even more strongly 
than open accusations could have done. A 
supper to which Tiberius had invited her be- 
came famous at Rome, for at it she refused 
obstinately and ostentatiously to touch any 
food or drink whatever, to the astonishment of 
the guests, who understood perfectly what her 
gestures meant. And such calumnies and 
such affronts Tiberius answered only with a 
weary and disdainful inertia; at most, when his 
patience was exhausted, some bitter and con- 
cise reproof would escape him. 

I have no doubt that Tiberius had resolved 
at the beginning to avoid all harsh measures 
as far as possible; for unpopular, misunder- 
stood, and detested as he was, he did not dare 
to use violence against a large part of the aris- 
tocracy and against his own house. Further- 
more, Agrippina was the least intelligent of 
the women of the family, and her senseless op- 
position could be tolerated as long as Livia and 

166 



TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA 

Antonia, the two really serious ladies of the 
family, sided with Tiberius. But it is easy to 
understand that this situation could not long 
endure. A power which defends itself weakly 
against the attacks of its enemies is destined 
to sink rapidly into a decline, and the party 
of Agrippina would therefore quickly have 
gained favor and power had there not arisen, 
to sustain the vacillating strength of Tiberius, 
a man whose name was to become sadly fa- 
mous — Sejanus — the commander of the pre- 
torian guard. 

Sejanus belonged to an obscure family of 
knights — to what we should now call 'the 6our- 
geoisie. He was not a senator, and he held no 
great political position; for his charge as com- 
mander of the guard was a purely military 
ofQce. In ordinary times he would have re- 
mained a secondary personage, exclusively 
concerned with the exacting duties .of his com- 
mand; but the party of Agrippina with its in- 
trigues, and the w^eakness and uncertainty of 
Tiberius, made of him, however, for a certain 
time, a formidable power. It is not difficult to 

167 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

see whence this power arose. The loyalty of 
the pretorian guard, upon which depended the 
security and the safety of the imperial author- 
ity, was one of the things which must seriously 
have preoccupied Tiberius, particularly in the 
face of the persistent and insidious intrigues 
and accusations of the party of Agrippina. The 
guard lived at Rome, in continual contact with 
the senate and the imperial house. Everything 
which was said in the senatorial circles or in 
the palaces of the emperor or of his relatives 
was quickly repeated among the cohorts, and 
the memory of Drusus and Germanicus was 
deeply venerated by the pretorians. If the 
guard could have been persuaded that the em- 
peror was a poisoner of his kindred, their loy- 
aliy would have been exposed to numberless 
intrigues and attempts at seduction. In such a 
condition of affairs, a commander of the guard 
who could inspire Tiberius with a complete and 
absolute trust might easily acquire a great in- 
fluence over him. Sejanus knew how to inspire 
this trust. This was partly by reason of his 
origin, for the equestrian order, on account of 

168 



i 



TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA 

its ancient rivalry with the senatorial nobility, 
was more favorably inclined than the latter 
toward the imperial authority; and partly also 
on account of certain reforms which he had 
succeeded in introducing into the pretorian 
guard. 

Once he had acquired the emperor's confi- 
dence, the ambitious and intelligent prefect of 
the pretorians proceeded to render himself in- 
dispensable in all things. The moment was 
favorable; Tiberius was becoming more and 
more wearied of his many affairs, of his many 
struggles, of his countless responsibilities; 
more and more disgusted with Rome, with its 
society, with the too frequent contact with the 
men whom it was his fate to govern. He was 
in the earlier stages of that settled melancholy 
which grew deeper and deeper in the last ten 
years of his life, and which had grown upon 
him as the result of long antagonisms, of great 
bitterness, and of continual terrors and sus- 
picions; and if it is true that Tiberius was ad- 
dicted to the vice of heavy drinking, as we hear 
from ancient writers, the abuse of wine may 

171 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

also have had its part in producing it. The 
tyrant, as historians have been pleased to call 
him, did actually seem to weaken in the fight 
for those ideals in which he had so long and 
so ardently believed. He tried to please the 
people by advocating no measures that might 
seem harsh or excessive to them. He even 
resisted, in the year 22 a.d., the pressure 
that his own party — his own puritan party — 
brought to bear upon him to apply with the 
utmost severity and discipline the laws against 
the fast increasing luxury of the men and 
women of his day. His reply to such pressure 
was a letter to the senate in which he deplored, 
among other things, the passion that so many 
women were showing for jewels and precious 
stones imported from distant countries. He 
maintained that it was the fault of such wo- 
men that so much gold left the country and 
pointed out how much more wisely the money 
could be spent in fortifying the boundaries of 
the empire. 

In view of all this it is not difficult to under- 
stand why the man who for many years had 

172 



TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA 

done everything for himself, who had never 
wished to have either counselors or confidants 
about him, now that he was growing old 
needed the support of younger energies and of 
stronger wills. But in his family he could rely 
only upon his son Drusus, who had now be- 
come a serious and trustworthy man, and in 
the year 22 a.d. he asked the senate that it con- 
cede to his son the tribunician power; that is, 
that they make him his colleague. But the son 
did not suffice, and Sejanus therefore suc- 
ceeded in making himself, together with Dru- 
sus, in fact, if not in name, the first and most 
active and influential collaborator and coun- 
selor of Tiberius. He was even more active 
and influential than Drusus, for the latter was 
frequently absent on distant military missions 
to the confines of the empire, while Sejanus, as 
commander of the pretorian guard, was virtu- 
ally always at Rome, where the emperor now 
appeared less and less frequently. 

Such was the origin of the anomalous power 
of this man, who was not even a senator — a 
power which was the result of the weakness of 

173 



THE WOMEN OF THE CiESARS 

Tiberius and of the fierce discords which di- 
vided the aristocracy; and it was a power 
which must of necessity prove disastrous, 
especially to the party of Agrippina and Ger- 
manicus. Although indications are not lack- 
ing that there was no great harmony or 
friendship between Sejanus and Drusus, it is 
evident that Sejanus, as the energetic represen- 
tative of the interests of Tiberius, must have 
directed all his efforts against the friends of 
Agrippina, who was arousing the fiercest op- 
position to the emperor. But in the year 23, 
an unforeseen event seemed suddenly to 
change the situation and to render possible a 
reconciliation between Tiberius and the party 
of Agrippina. In this year, Drusus also, like 
so many other members of his family, died 
prematurely, at the age of thirty-eight, and on 
this occasion, for the time being, at least, no 
one raised the cry of poisoning. This unex- 
pected misfortune moved Tiberius pro- 
foundly, for he dearly loved his son, and it 
seemed for a moment to determine the tri- 
umph of Agrippina's party. Now that his son 

174 




From a drawing- by Andr6 Castaig^ne 

DEPOSITING THE ASHES OF A MEMBER OF THE IMPERIAL 
FAMILY IN A ROMAN COLUMBARIUM 



TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA 

had been taken from him, where, if not 
among the sons of Germanicus and Agrippina, 
could Tiberius look for a successor? And, as a 
further proof that Tiberius desired as far as 
possible to avoid conflict in the bosom of his 
family, he did not hesitate a moment, despite 
all the annoyances and difficulties which he 
had suffered at the hands of Agrippina and 
her friends. He officially recognized that in 
the sons of Germanicus were henceforth 
placed the future hopes of his family and of 
the empire. Of the two elder, Nero was now 
sixteen and Drusus was somewhat younger, 
though we do not know his exact age. These 
he summoned to appear before the senate, and 
he presented them to the assembly with a 
noble discourse the substance of which Taci- 
tus has preserved for us, exhorting the youths 
and the senate to fulfil their respective duties 
for the greatness and the prosperity of the 
republic. 

After the death of Drusus, therefore, a recon- 
ciliation became possible in the family of the 
Caesars. The latent rivalry between the fam- 
9 177 



THE WOMEN OF THE CiESARS 

ilies of Tiberius and Germanicus was extin- 
guished. Indeed, even in the midst of the 
tears shed for the early death of Drusus, a 
gleam of concord seems to have shone down 
upon the house desolated by many tragedies, 
while Sejanus, whose power depended upon 
the strife of the factions, was for a moment 
set aside and driven back into the shadows. 
But it was not to continue long; for soon the 
flames of discord broke out more violently 
than ever. Whom shall we blame, Sejanus or 
Agrippina? Tacitus says that it was the faiilt 
of Sejanus, whom he accuses of having tried 
to destroy the descendants of Germanicus, in 
order to usurp their place: but he himself is 
forced to admit in another passage (Annals iv., 
59) that virtually a little court of freedmen 
and dependents gathered about Nero, the 
leader of the sons of Germanicus, urging him 
on against Tiberius and Sejanus, and begging 
him to act quickly. "This," they said, "is the 
will of the people, the desire of the armies. 
Nor would Sejanus, who was even then mak- 
ing light of the patience of the old man and of 

178 



TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA 

the dilatoriness of the youth, have dared to 
resist him." From such speeches it is only a 
short step to plans for rebellion and con- 
spiracy. In all probability the blame for this 
later and more bitter dissension must, as 
usually happens, be divided between the two 
factions. The party of Agrippina, embold- 
ened by its good fortune and by the weakness 
of Tiberius, was, after the death of Drusus, 
conscious of its own supremacy. Its members 
had only a single aim; even before it was pos- 
sible they wished to see Nero, the first-born 
son of Germanicus, in the position of Tiberius. 
They therefore took up again their struggles 
and intrigues against Tiberius, and attempted 
to incite Nero against the emperor. But this 
time Sejanus was blocking their pathway. 
The death of Drusus had even further in- 
creased the trust and affection which the em- 
peror had for his assistant, and he was 
henceforth the only confidant and the only 
friend of the emperor; a war without quarter 
between him and Agrippina, her sons and the 
party of Germanicus, was inevitable. And 

179 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

Sejanus opened the action by attempting to 
exclude from the magistracy and from office 
all the friends of Agrippina and all the mem- 
bers of the opposing faction. At this time it 
was difficult to arrive at any of the more im- 
portant offices without being recommended to 
the senate by the emperor, against whose 
choice the senate no longer dared to rebel; 
since the emperor was held responsible for the 
conduct of the government, it was only just 
that he should be allowed to select his more 
important collaborators. Sejanus was there- 
fore able, by using his influence over Tiberius, 
to lay a thousand difficulties and obstacles in 
the way of even the legitimate ambitions of 
the most eminent men of the opposite faction. 
Nor were these the only weapons employed; 
others no less efficacious were called into play, 
and intrigues, calumnies, accusations, and 
trials were set on foot without scruple and 
with a ferocity the horror of which Tacitus has 
painted with indelible colors. Among these 
intrigues two matrimonial projects must be 
mentioned. In the year 25 Sejanus attempted 

180 




Hrom a drawing- by Audr^ Castaigne 

THE STARVING LIVILLA REFUSING FOOD 



TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA 

a bold stroke; he repudiated his wife Apicata, 
and asked Tiberius for the hand of Livilla 
(Livia), the widow of Drusus. Sejanus had 
frequented the political aristocracy of the em- 
pire, and, despite his equestrian origin, was 
quick to adopt not only their ambitions and 
their manners, but also their ideas on mar- 
riage. He, too, considered it as simply a politi- 
cal instrument, a means of acquiring and 
consolidating power. He had therefore dis- 
rupted his first family in order to contract this 
marriage, which would have redoubled his 
power and his influence and have introduced 
him into the imperial household. But his bold 
stroke failed, because Tiberius refused; and 
he refused, Tacitus tells us, above all because 
he was afraid that this marriage would still 
further irritate Agrippina. The emperor is 
supposed to have told Sejanus that too many 
feminine quarrels were already disturbing and 
agitating the house of the Csesars, to the serious 
detriment of his nephew's sons. And what 
would happen, he asked, if this marriage 
should still further foment existing hatreds? 

183 



THE WOMEN OF THE G.ESARS 

Quid si intendatur certamen tali conjugio? 
The reply is significant, because it proves to us 
that Tiberius, who is accused of harboring a 
fierce hate against the sons of Germanicus and 
Agrippina, was still seeking, two years after 
the death of Drusus, to appease both factions, 
attempting not to irritate his adversaries and 
to preserve a reasonable equanimity in the 
midst of these animosities and these struggles. 
In any case, Sejanus was refused, and this 
refusal was a slight success for the party of 
Agrippina, which, a year later, in 26, attempted 
on its own account an analogous move. Agrip- 
pina asked Tiberius for permission to remarry. 
If we are to believe Tacitus, Agrippina made 
this request on her own initiative, impelled by 
one of those numerous and more or less rea- 
sonable caprices which were continually 
shooting through her head. But are we to sup- 
pose that suddenly, after a long widowhood, 
Agrippina put forth so strange a proposal 
without any arriere-pensee whatever? Fur- 
thermore, if this proposal had been merely the 
momentary caprice of a whimsical woman, 

184 



TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA 

would it have been so seriously debated in the 
imperial household, and would the daughter 
of Agrippina have recounted the episode in 
her memoirs? It is more probable that this 
marriage, too, had a political aim. By giving 
a husband to Agrippina, they were also seek- 
ing to give a leader to the anti-Tiberian party. 
The sons of Germanicus were too young, and 
Agrippina was too violent and tactless, to be 
able alone to cope successfully with Sejanus, 
supported as he was by Tiberius, by Livia, and 
by Antonia. We can thus explain why Tiberius 
opposed and prevented the marriage: Agrip- 
pina, unassisted, had caused him sufficient 
trouble; it would have been entirely super- 
fluous for him to sanction her taking to herself 
an official counselor in the guise of a husband. 
This time Sejanus triumphed over the ill 
success of his rivals, and the struggle continued 
in this manner between the two parties, but 
with an increasing advantage to Sejanus. Be- 
ginning with the year 26, we see numerous 
indications that the party of Agrippina and 
Germanicus was no longer able to resist the 

185 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

blows and machinations of Sejanus, who de- 
tached from it, one after another, all the men 
of any importance. He either won them over 
to himself through his favors and his promises, 
or he frightened them with his threats; and 
those who resisted most tenaciously, he de- 
stroyed with his suits. 

Tiberius was the storm-center of these strug- 
gles, and contrary to what legend has reported, 
he attempted as far as he was able to prevent 
the two parties from going to extremes. But 
what pain, repugnance, and fatigue it must 
have cost him to make the effort necessary for 
maintaining a last ray of reason and justice 
among so many evil passions, animosities, am- 
bitions, and rivalries! It must have cost him 
dearly, for he had grown up in the time when 
the dream of a great restoration of the aristoc- 
racy was luring the upper classes of Rome with 
its fairest and most luminous smile. As a 
young man he had known and loved Vergil, 
Horace, and Livy, the two poets and the his- 
torian of this great dream; like all the elect 
spirits of those now distant years, he had seen 

186 



TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA 

behind this vision a great senate, a glorious 
and terrible army, an austere and revered re- 
public like that which Livy had pictured with 
glowing colors in his immortal pages. 

Instead of all this, he was now forced to 
take his place at the head of this decadent and 
wretched nobility, which seemed to be inter- 
ested only in rending itself asunder with 
calumnies, denunciations, suits, and scan- 
dalous condemnations, and which repaid him 
for all that he had done and was still doing for 
its safety and the prosperity of the empire by 
directing against his name the most atrocious 
calumnies, the fiercest railleries, and every sort 
of ridiculous and infamous legend. He had 
dreamed of victories over the enemies of 
Rome, and he had to resign himself to strug- 
gling day and night against the hysterical ex- 
travagance of Agrippina : he had to be content, 
even without the sure hope of success, if he 
could convince the majority that he was not a 
poisoner. Authority without glory or respect, 
power divorced from the means sufficient for 
its exercise — such was the situation in which 

187 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

the successor of Augustus, the second emperor, 
after twelve years of a difficult and trying 
reign, found himself. He no longer felt him- 
self safe at Rome, where he feared rightly or 
wrongly that his life was being continually 
threatened, and it is not astonishing that, old, 
wearied, and disgusted, between the years 26 
and 27 he should have retired definitely to 
Capri, seeking to hide his misanthropy, his 
weariness, and his disgust with men and things 
in the wonderful little isle which a delightful 
caprice of nature had set down in the lap of 
the divine Bay of Naples. 

But instead of the peace he sought at Capri, 
Tiberius found the infamy of history. How 
dark and terrible are the memories of him as- 
sociated with the charming isle, which, violet- 
tinted, on beautiful sunny days emerges from 
an azure sea against an azure sky! That frag- 
ment of paradise fallen upon the shore of one 
of the most beautiful seas in the world is said 
to have been for about ten years a hell of fierce 
cruelties and abominable vices. Tiberius 
passed sentence upon himself, in the opinion 

188 



TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA 

of posterity, when he secluded himself in 
Capri. Ought we, without a further word, to 
transcribe this sentence? There are, to be sure, 
no decisive arguments to prove false the ac- 
counts about the horrors of Capri which the 
ancients, and especially Suetonius, have trans- 
mitted to us; there are some, however, which 
make us mistrust and withhold our judgment. 
Above all, we have the right to ask ourselves 
how, from whom, and by access to what 
sources did Suetonius and the other ancients 
learn so many extraordinary details. It must 
be remembered that all the great figures in 
the history of Rome who had many enemies, 
like Sylla, Caesar, Antony, and Augustus him- 
self, were accused of having scandalous habits. 
Precisely because the puritan tradition was 
strong at Rome, such an accusation did much 
harm, and for this reason, whether true or 
false, enemies were glad to repeat it whenever 
they wished to discredit a character. Lastly, 
all the ancient writers, even the most hostile, 
tell us that up to a ripe age Tiberius preserved 
his exemplary habits. Is it likely, then, that 

189 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

suddenly, when already old, he should have 
soiled himself with all the vices? At all events, 
if there is any truth contained in these ac- 
counts, we can at most conclude that as an old 
man Tiberius became subject to some mental 
infirmity and that the man who took refuge at 
Capri was no longer entirely sane. 

Certain it is, in any case, that after his retire- 
ment to Capri, Tiberius seriously neglected 
public affairs, and that Sejanus was finally 
looked upon at Rome as the de facto emperor. 
The bulletins and reports which were sent 
from the empire and from Rome to the em- 
peror passed through his hands, as well as the 
decisions which Tiberius sent back to the state. 
At Rome, in all affairs of serious or slight im- 
portance, the senators turned to Sejanus, and 
about him, whom all fell into the habit of 
considering as the true emperor, a court and 
party were formed. In fear of his great 
power, the senators and the old aristocracy 
suppressed the envy which the dizzy rise of 
this obscure knight had aroused. Rome suf- 
fered without protest that a man of obscure 

190 




From the statue in Rome 



COSTUME OF A CHIEF VESTAL 
(VIRGO VESTALIS MAXIMA) 



TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA 

birth should rule the empire in the place of a 
descendant of the great Claudian family, and 
the senators of the most illustrious houses 
grew accustomed to paying him court. Worse 
still, virtually all of them aided him, either by 
openly favoring him or by allowing him a free 
hand, to complete the decisive destruction of 
the party and the family of Germanicus, — of 
that same Germanicus of whom all had been 
fond and whose memory the people still vener- 
ated. 

After the retirement of Tiberius to Capri, all 
felt that Agrippina and her sons were inevi- 
tably doomed sooner or later to succumb in 
the duel with the powerful, ambitious, and im- 
placable prefect of the pretorians who repre- 
sented Tiberius at Rome. Only a few generous 
idealists remained faithful to the conquered, 
who were now near their destruction; such 
supporters as might possibly ease the misery 
of ruin, but not ward it off or avoid it. Among 
these last faithful and heroic friends was a 
certain Titius Sabinus, and the implacable Se- 
janus destroyed him with a suit of which 

193 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

Tacitus has given us an account, a horrible 
story of one of the most abominable judicial 
machinations which human perfidy can imag- 
ine. Dissensions arose to aggravate the al- 
ready serious danger in which Agrippina and 
her friends had been placed. Nero, the first- 
born son, and Drusus, the second, became 
hostile at the very moment when they should 
have united against the ruthless adversary who 
wished to exterminate them all. A last rock 
of refuge remained to protect the family of 
Germanicus. It was Livia, the revered old lady 
who had been present at the birth of the for- 
tunes of Augustus and the new imperial au- 
thority, and who had held in her arms that 
infant world which had been born in the midst 
of the convulsions of the civil wars, and a little 
later had watched it try its first steps on the 
pathway of history. Livia did not much love 
Agrippina, whose hatred and intrigues against 
Tiberius she had always blamed; but she was 
too wise and too solicitous of the prestige of 
the family to allow Sejanus entirely to destroy 
the house of Germanicus. As long as she 

194 



TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA 

lived, Agrippina and Nero could dwell safely 
in Rome. But Li via was feeble, and in the 
beginning of 29, at the age of eighty-six, she 
died. The catastrophe which had been care- 
fully prepared by Sejanus was now consum- 
mated; a few months after the death of Livia, 
Agrippina and Nero were subjected to a suit, 
and, under an accusation of having conspired 
against Tiberius, were condemned to exile by 
the senate. Shortly after his condemnation, 
Nero committed suicide. 

The account which Tacitus gives us of this 
trial is obscure, involved, and fragmentary, for 
the story is broken off at its most important 
point by an unfortunate lacuna in the manu- 
script. The other historians add but little light 
with their brief phrases and passing allusions. 
We do not therefore entirely understand either 
the contents of the charges, the reason for the 
condemnation, the stand taken by the accused, 
or the conduct of Tiberius with regard to the 
accusation. It seems hardly probable that 
Agrippina and Nero could have been truly 
guilty of a real conspiracy against Tiberius. 

195 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

Isolated as they had been by Sejanus after the 
retirement of Tiberius to Capri, they would 
scarcely have been able to set a conspiracy on 
foot, even if they had so desired. They were 
paying the penalty for the long war of calum- 
nies and slanders which they had waged upon 
Tiberius, for the aversion and the scorn which 
they had always shown for him. In this course 
of conduct many senators had encouraged 
them as long as Tiberius alone had not dared 
to have recourse to violent and cruel measures 
in order to make himself respected by his 
family. But such acts of disrespect became 
serious crimes for the unfortunate woman and 
her hapless son, even in the eyes of the sena- 
tors who had encouraged them to commit 
them, now that Sejanus had reinvigorated the 
imperial authority with his energy, and now 
that all felt that behind Tiberius and in his 
name and place there was acting a man of 
decision who knew how to punish his enemies 
and to reward his friends. 

The trial and condemnation of Agrippina 
and Nero were certainly the machinations of 

196 



TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA 

Sejanus, who carried along with him not only 
the senate and the friends of the imperial fam- 
ily, but perhaps even Tiberius himself. They 
prove how much Sejanus had been able to 
strengthen imperial authority, which had 
been hesitating and feeble in the last decade. 
Sejanus had dared to do what Tiberius had 
never succeeded in doing; he had destroyed 
that center of opposition which gathered about 
Agrippina in the house of Germanicus. It is 
therefore scarcely necessary to say that the 
ruin of Agrippina still further increased the 
power of Sejanus. All bowed trembling be- 
fore the man who had dared humiliate the 
very family of the Julio-Claudii. Honors were 
showered upon his head; he was made senator 
and pontifex; he received the proconsular 
power; there was talk of a marriage between 
him and the widow of Nero; and it was finally 
proposed that he be named consul for five 
years. Indeed, in 31, through the will of Ti- 
berius, he actually became the colleague of the 
emperor himself in the consulate. He needed 
only the tribunician power to make him the 

199 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

official collaborator of the emperor and his 
designated successor. Every one at Rome, fur- 
thermore, considered him the future prince. 

But having arrived at this height, Sejanus's 
head was turned, and he asked himself why he 
should exercise the rule and have all its bur- 
dens and dangers while he left to others the 
pomp, the honors, and the advantages. Al- 
though Tiberius allowed the senate to heap 
honors upon his faithful prefect of the pre- 
torians, and though he himself showed his 
gratitude to him in many ways, even going to 
the point of being willing to give him the 
widow of Nero in marriage, he never really 
expected to take him as his colleague or to 
designate him as his successor. Tiberius was a 
Claudian, and that a knight without ancestry 
should be placed at the head of the Roman 
aristocracy was to him unthinkable; after the 
exile of Nero he had cast his eyes upon Gains, 
another son of Germanicus, as his possible suc- 
cessor. Nor had he hidden his intention: he 
had even clearly expressed it in different 
speeches to the senate. Therefore Sejanus 

200 



TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA 

must finally have come to the conclusion that 
if he continued to defend Tiberius and his in- 
terests, he could no longer hope for anything 
from him, and might even compromise the in- 
fluence and the popularity which he had al- 
ready acquired. Tiberius was hated and 
detested, there was a numerous party opposed 
to him in the senate, and he was extremely un- 
popular among the masses. Many admired 
Sejanus through spiteful hatred of Tiberius, 
for it amounted to saying that they preferred 
to be governed by an obscure knight rather 
than by an old and detested Claudian who had 
shut himself up in Capri. 

And thus Sejanus seems to have deluded 
himself into believing that if he succeeded in 
doing away with the emperor, he could easily 
take his position by setting aside the young 
son of Germanicus and profiting by the popu- 
larity which the fall of Tiberius would bring 
him. Little by little he came to an understand- 
ing with the enemies of Tiberius and prepared 
a conspiracy for the final overthrow of the 
odious government of the son of Livia. Many 

201 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

senators had agreed to this, and certainly few 
conspiracies were ever organized under more 
favorable auspices. Tiberius was old, dis- 
gusted with everything and everybody, and 
alone in Capri; he had virtually not a single 
friend in Rome; what happened in the world 
he knew only through what Sejanus told him. 
He was therefore entirely in the hands of the 
man who was preparing to sacrifice him to the 
tenacious hatred of the people and the sena- 
torial aristocracy. Young, energetic, and the 
favorite of fortune, Sejanus had with him a 
formidable party in the senate, he was the com- 
mander of the pretorian guard, — that is, of the 
only military force stationed in Italy,— and he 
had terrified with his implacable persecutions 
all those whom he had failed to win over 
through his promises or his favors. Could the 
duel between this misanthropic old man and 
this vigorous, energetic, ruthless climber end 
in any other way than with the defeat of the 
former? 

But now stepping forward suddenly from 
the shadows to which she had retired, a lady 

202 




From a photograph by Aliiiari of the marble in the Uffiz. 

BUST, SUPPOSED TO BE OF ANTONIA— DAUGHTER OF 

MARK ANTONY AND OCTAVIA— AND MOTHER 

OF GERMANICUS 



TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA 

appeared, threw herself between the two con- 
testants, and changed the fate of the combat. 
It was Antonia, the daughter of the famous 
triumvir, the revered widow of Drusus. 

After the death of Livia, Antonia was the 
most respected personage of the imperial fam- 
ily in Rome. She still watched, withdrawn but 
alert, over the destiny of the house now virtu- 
ally destroyed by death, dissensions, the cruelty 
of the laws, and the relentless anger of the 
aristocracy. It was she who scented out the 
plot, and quickly and courageously she in- 
formed Tiberius. The latter, in danger and in 
Capri, displayed again the energy and sagacity 
of his best period. The danger was most 
threatening, especially because Sejanus was 
the commander of the pretorian guard. Tibe- 
rius beguiled him with friendly letters, dan- 
gling in front of him the hope that he had 
conceded to him the tribunician power, — that 
is, that he had made him his colleague, — ^while 
at the same time he secretly took measures to 
appoint a successor for him. Suddenly Sejanus 
learned that he was no longer commander of 

205 



THE WOMEN OF THE CiESARS 

the guard, and that the emperor had accused 
him before the senate of conspiracy. In an 
instant, under this blow, the fortunes of Seja- 
nus collapsed. The envy and the latent hatred 
against the parvenu, the knight who had risen 
higher than all others, and who had humiliated 
the senatorial aristocracy with his good for- 
tune, were reawakened, and the senate and 
public opinion turned fiercely against him. 
Sejanus, his family, his friends, his accom- 
plices, and those who seemed to be his accom- 
plices, were put to death after summary trials 
by the fury of the mob; and in Rome blood 
flowed in torrents. 

Antonia might now have enjoyed the satis- 
faction of having saved through her foresight 
not only Tiberius, but the entire family, when 
suddenly one of the surges of that fierce tem- 
pest of ambitions and hatreds tore from her 
side even her own daughter, Livilla, the widow 
of Drusus, and cast her as a prey into that sea 
of blind popular frenzy. The reader has per- 
haps not forgotten that eight years before, 
when Sejanus was hoping to marry Livilla, he 

206 



TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA 

had repudiated his first wife, Apicata. Apicata 
had not wished to outlive the ruin of her for- 
mer husband, and she killed herself, but only 
after having written Tiberius a letter in which 
she acciised Livilla of having poisoned Drusus 
through connivance with Sejanus, whom she 
wished to marry. I confess that this accusation 
seems to me hardly probable, and I do not be- 
lieve that the denunciation of Apicata is suffi- 
cient ground for admitting it. Above all, it is 
well to inquire what proofs Apicata could have 
had of this crime, and how she could have pro- 
cured them even if the crime had been com- 
mitted. Since the two accomplices would have 
been obliged to hide their infamous deed from 
all, there was no one from whom they would 
have concealed it more carefully than from 
Apicata. We must further note that it is not 
probable that a cautious man, as Sejanus was 
in the year 23, would have thought of commit- 
ting so serious a crime as that of poisoning the 
son of his protector. For what reason would 
he have done so? He did not then think of suc- 
ceeding Tiberius; by removing Drusus, he 

207 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

would merely have improved the situation of 
the family of Germanicus, which at that time 
was already hostile to him and with which he 
was preparing to struggle. Instead, might not 
this accusation in extremis be the last ven- 
geance of a repudiated woman against the 
rival who for a moment had threatened to take 
the position from which she herself had been 
driven?' Apicata did not belong to the aristoc- 
racy, and, unlike the ladies of the senatorial 
families, she had not therefore been brought 
up with the idea of having to serve docilely as 
an instrument for the political career of her 
own husband. Perhaps her denunciation was 
the revenge of feminine jealousy, of that pas- 
sion which the lower orders of Roman society 
did not extinguish in the hearts of their women 
as did the aristocracy. 

This denunciation, however,- — ^we know this 
from the pages of ancient writers,— was one of 
the most terrible griefs of Tiberius's old age. 
He had loved his son tenderly, and the idea of 
leaving so horrible a crime unpunished, in case 
the accusation was true, drove him to despera- 

208 



TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA 

tion. Yet, on the other hand, Livilla, the pre- 
sumptive criminal, was the daughter of his 
faithful friend, of that Antonia who had saved 
him from the treacheries of Sejanus. As for 
the public, ever ready to believe all the in- 
famies which were reported of the imperial 
house, it was firmly convinced that Livilla was 
an abominable poisoner. A great trial was set 
on foot; many suspects were put to torture, 
which is evidence that they were arriving at no 
definite conclusions, and this was probably be- 
cause they were seeking for the proofs of an 
imaginary crime. Livilla, how^ever, did not 
survive the scandal, the accusations, the sus- 
picions of Tiberius, and the distrust of those 
about her. Because she was the daughter of 
Drusus and the daughter-in-law of Tiberius, 
because she belonged to the family which for- 
tune had placed at the head of the immense 
empire of Rome, she would not be able to per- 
suade any one that she was innocent. The 
obscure woman, without ancestry, who was ac- 
cusing her from the grave, would be taken at 
her word by every one; she would convince 

209 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

posterity and history; against all reason she 
would prevail over the greatness of Livillal So 
Livilla took refuge in her mother's house and 
starved herself to death, for she v^as unable to 
outlive an accusation which it was impossible 
to refute. 

Tiberius's reign continued for six years after 
this terrible tragedy, but it was only a species 
of slow death-agony. The year 33 saw still 
another tragic event — the suicide of Agrippina 
and her son Drusus. Of the race of Germani- 
cus there remained alive only one son, Gains 
(the later Emperor Galigula), and three daugh- 
ters, of whom the eldest, Agrippina, the mother 
of Nero, had been married a few years before 
to the descendant of one of the greatest houses 
of Rome, Gnseus Domitius Enobarbus. Tibe- 
rius still remained as the last relic of a bygone 
time to represent ideas and aspirations which 
were henceforth lost causes, amid the ruins 
and the tombs of his friends. Posterity, fol- 
lowing in the footsteps of Tacitus, has held 
him and his dark nature alone responsible for 
this ruin. We ought to believe instead that he 

210 



TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA 

was a man born to a loftier and more fortunate 
destiny, but that he had to pay the penalty for 
the unique eminence to which fortune had ex- 
alted him. Like the members of his family 
who had been driven into exile, who had died 
before their time, who had been driven to sui- 
cide in despair, he, too, was the victim of a 
tragic situation full of insoluble contradic- 
tions; and precisely because he was destined to 
live, he was perhaps the most unfortunate vic- 
tim of them all. 



211 



THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA AND THE MARRIAGE 
OF MESSALINA 

VFTER the death of Tiberius (37 a.d.), the 
a\ problem of the succession presented to 
the senate was not an easy one. In his will, 
Tiberius had adopted, and thereby designated 
to the senate as his successors, Caius Caligula, 
the son of Germanicus, and Tiberius, the son 
of his own son Drusus. The latter was only 
seventeen, and too young for such a respon- 
sibility. Caligula was twenty-seven, and there- 
fore still very young, although by straining a 
point he might be emperor; yet he did not en- 
joy a good reputation. If we except him, there 
was no other member of the family old enough 
to govern except Tiberius Claudius Nero, the 
brother of Germanicus and the only surviving 
son of Drusus and Antonia. He was generally 
considered a fool, was the laughing-stock of 
freedmen and women, and such a gawk and 

212 



f*' 




From tlie bust in the C'lpitoline Mu:3duiu, Kome 

CALIGULA 



THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA 

clown that it had been impossible to put him 
into the magistracy. Indeed, he was not even 
a senator when Tiberius died. 

As they could not consider him, there re- 
mained only Caligula, unless they wished to go 
outside the family of Augustus, which, if not 
impossible, was at least difficult and danger- 
ous. For the provinces, the German bar- 
barians, and especially the soldiers of the 
legions, were accustomed to look upon this 
family as the mainstay of the empire. The 
legions had become specially attached to the 
memory and to the race of Drusus and German- 
icus, who still lived in the minds of the soldiers 
as witnesses to their former exploits and vir- 
tues. During the long watches of the night, as 
their names were repeated in speech and story, 
their shades, idealized by death, returned again 
to revisit the camps on the banks of the Rhine 
and the Danube. The veneration and affection 
which the armies had once felt for the Roman 
nobility were now centered about the family 
of Augustus. In this difficulty, therefore, the 
senate chose the lesser evil, and, annulling a 

215 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 



part of the testament of Tiberius, elected Calig- 
ula, the son of Germanicus, as their emperor. 
The death of Tiberius, however, was destined 
to show the Romans for the first time that 
although it was hard to find an emperor, it 
might even be harder to find an empress. Dur- 
ing the long reign of Augustus, Livia had dis- 
charged the duties of this difficult position with 
incomparable success. Tiberius had succeeded 
Augustus, and after his divorce from Julia had 
never remarried. There had therefore been a 
long interregnum in the Roman world of femi- 
nine society, during which no one had ever 
stopped to think whether it would be easy or 
difficult to find a woman who could with dig- 
nity take over the position of Livia. The prob- 
lem was really presented for the first time with 
the advent of Caligula; for, at twenty-seven, he 
could not solve it as simply as Tiberius had 
done. In the first place, it was to be expected 
that a man of his age would have a wife; sec- 
ondly, the Lex de maritandis ordinibus made 
marriage a necessity for him, as for all the 
senators; furthermore, the head of the state 

216 



THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA 

needed to have a woman at his side, if he 
wished to discharge all his social duties. The 
celibacy of Tiberius had undoubtedly contrib- 
uted to the social isolation which had been fatal 
both to him and to the state. 

Therefore in Caligula's time the Roman pub- 
lic became aware that the problem confronting 
it was a most difficult one. A most exacting 
public opinion, hesitating between the ideals 
of two epochs, wished to see united in the em- 
press the best part, both of the ancient and of 
the modern customs, and was consequently 
demanding that the second Livia should pos- 
sess virtually every quality. It was necessary 
that she should be of noble birth; that is, a 
descendant of one of those great Roman fam- 
ilies which with every year were becoming less 
numerous, less prolific, less virtuous, and more 
fiercely divided among themselves by irrecon- 
cilable hatreds. This latter was a most serious 
difficulty; for by marrying into one of these 
lines, the emperor ran the risk of antagonizing 
all those other families which were its enemies. 
The empress, furthermore, must be the model 

217 



THE WOMEN OF THE C.ESARS 

of all the virtues; fruitful, in order to obey the 
Lex de maritandis ordinibus; religious, chaste, 
and virtuous, that she might not violate the Lex 
de adulteriis; simple and modest, in deference 
to the Lex sumptuaria. She must be able to 
rule v^isely over the vast household of the em- 
peror, full of his slaves and f reedmen, and she 
must aid her husband in the fulfilment of all 
those social duties — receptions, dinners, enter- 
tainments — which, though serious concerns 
for every Roman nobleman, were even more 
serious for the emperor. That she should be 
stupid or ignorant was of course out of the 
question. In fact, from this time to the down- 
fall of Nero the difhculties of the imperial 
family and its authority arise not so much 
from the emperors as from their wives; so that 
it may truly be said that it was the women who 
unwittingly dragged down to its ruin the great 
Julio-Claudian house. 

But if the difficulty was serious, there never 
was a man so little fitted and so ill prepared to 
face it as this young man of twenty-seven who 
had been exalted to the imperial dignity after 

218 




From the collection of Professor G. N. Olcott 

A BRONZE SESTERTIUS (SLIGHTLY ENLARGED) SHOWING THE 
SISTERS OF CALIGULA (AGRIPPINA, DRUSILLA, AND JULIA LI- 
VILLA) ON ONE SIDE AND GERMANICUS ON THE OTHER SIDE 




Enlarg-edf: 



1 owned hy Professor G. N. Olcott 



A BRONZE SESTERTIUS WITH THE HEAD 

OF AGRIPPINA THE ELDER, DAUGHTER 

OF AGRIPPA AND JULIA, THE 

DAUGHTER OF AUGUSTUS 

She was the wife of Germanicus, and their daughter, Agrippina 
the younger, was the mother of the Emperor Nero 



THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA 

the death of Tiberius. Four years before his 
election as emperor, he had married a certain 
Julia Claudilla, a lady who doubtless belonged 
to one of the great Roman families, but about 
whom we have no definite information. We 
cannot say, therefore, whether or not at the 
side of a second Augustus she might have be- 
come a new Livia. In any case, it is certain 
that Caligula was not a second Augustus. He 
was probably not so frenzied a lunatic as an- 
cient writers have pictured him, but his was 
certainly an extravagant, unbalanced mind, 
given to excesses, and unhinged by the de- 
lirium of greatness, which his coming to the 
throne had increased the more because it had 
been conferred upon him at a time when he 
was too young and before he had been suffi- 
ciently prepared. For many years Caligula 
had never even hoped to succeed Tiberius; he 
had continually feared that the fate of his 
mother and his two brothers was likewise 
waiting for him. Far from having dreamed 
that he would be raised to the imperial purple, 
he had merely desired that he might not have 
" 221 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

to end his days as an exile on some desert 
island in the Mediterranean. So much good 
fortune after the long persecutions of his fam- 
ily profoundly disturbed his mental faculties, 
which had not originally been well balanced, 
and it fomented in him that delirium of gran- 
deur which violently directed his desires to- 
ward distant Egypt, in the customs of which, 
rather than in those of Rome, he, in the exalta- 
tion of power, sought satisfaction for his im- 
perial vanity. From his earliest youth Caligula 
had shown a great inclination for the products 
and the men of that far country, then greatly 
admired and greatly feared by the Romans. 
For instance, we know that all his servants 
were Egyptians, and that Helicon, his most 
faithful and influential freedman, was an 
Alexandrian. But shortly after his elevation 
this admiration for the land of the Ptolemies 
and the Pharaohs broke forth into a furor of 
Egyptian exoticism, which impelled him to an 
attempt to bring his own reign into connection 
with the policies of his great-grandfather Mark 
Antony. He sought to introduce into Rome 

222 



THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA 

the ideas, the customs, the sumptuousness, and 
the institutions of the Pharaoh-Ptolemaic mon- 
archy, to make of his palace a court similar to 
that of Alexandria, and of himself a divine 
king, adored in flesh and blood, as sovereigns 
were adored on the banks of the Nile. 

Caligula was undoubtedly mad, but his mad- 
ness would have seemed less chaotic and in- 
comprehensible, and a thread of sense would 
have been discovered even in his excesses and 
in the ravings of his unsettled mind, if it had 
been understood that many of his most famous 
freaks were moved and inspired by this Egyp- 
tian idea and tendency. In the madness of 
Caligula, as in the story of Antony and the 
tragedy of Tiberius, there is forever recurring, 
under a new form, the great struggle between 
Italy and the East, between Rome and Alexan- 
dria, which can never be divorced from the 
history of the last century of the republic and 
the first century of the empire. Whoever care- 
fully sifts out the separate actions in the dis- 
ordered conduct of the third Roman emperor 
will easily rediscover the thread of this idea 

223 



THE WOMEN OF THE CiESARS 

and the trace of this latent conflict. For in- 
stance, we see the new emperor scarcely elected 
before he introduced the worship of Isis 
among the official cults of the Roman state and 
assigned in the calendar a public festival to 
Isis. In short, he was favoring those Egyptian 
cults which Tiberius, with his "old-Roman" 
sympathies, had fiercely combatted. Further- 
more, we see Caligula prohibiting the festival 
in commemoration of the battle of Actium, 
which had been celebrated every year for more 
than half a century. At first sight the idea 
seems absurd; but it must not be considered a 
caprice; for with this act Caligula was intend- 
ing to initiate the historical rehabilitation of 
Mark Antony, the man who had tried to shift 
the center of Roman politics from Rome to 
Alexandria. The emperor meant to make 
plain to Rome that she was no longer to boast 
of having humiliated Alexandria with arms, 
since Alexandria would henceforth be taken as 
a model in all things. 

Just as the dynasty of the Ptolemies had 
been surrounded by a semi-religious vener- 

224 




CLAUDIUS, MESSALINA, AND THEIR TWO CHILDREN IN WHAT 
IS KNOWN AS THE "HAGUE CAMEO" 



THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA 



ation, Caligula, inspired as he was by Egyptian 
and Ptolemaic conceptions, sought to have this 
same veneration bestowed upon his entire 
family — that family which under Tiberius had 
been persecuted and defamed by suits and 
decimated by suicides through the envy of the 
aristocracy, which was forever unwilling to 
forgive its too great prestige. Caligula not 
only hastened to set .out in person to gather up 
the bones of Agrippina, his mother, and of his 
brother, in order to bring them to Rome and 
deposit them piously in the tomb of Augustus, 
— that was a natural duty of filial piety, — but 
he also prohibited any one to name among his 
ancestors the great Agrippa, the builder of the 
Pantheon, because his very obscure origin 
seemed a blot upon the semi-divine purity of 
his race. He had the title of Augusta and all 
the privileges of the vestal virgins bestowed 
upon his grandmother Antonia, the daughter 
of Mark Antony and the faithful friend of Ti- 
berius; he had these same vestal privileges 
bestowed upon his three sisters, Agrippina, 
Drusilla, and Livilla; he had assigned to them 

227 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

a privileged position equal to his own at the 
games in the circus; he even had it decreed 
that their names should be included in the 
vows which the magistrates and pontiffs of- 
fered every year for the prosperity of the 
prince and of his people, and that in the pray- 
ers for the conservation of his power there 
should also be included a prayer for their 
felicity. This was a small revolution from the 
constitutional point of view; for the Romans, 
though allowing their women ample freedom 
to occupy themselves with politics from the 
retirement of their homes, had never recog- 
nized for them any official capacity. Tiberius, 
faithfully adhering in this also to tradition, 
had gone as far as to prevent the senate, at the 
time of Livia's death, from voting public hon- 
ors to her memory, which, he thought, might 
have justified the belief that his mother had 
been, not a matron of the old Roman stamp, 
but a public personage. Caligula, however, 
was quite indifferent to tradition, and by his 
expressed will, as if in reaction against the 
persecutions and the humiliations which the 

228 



THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA 

imperial family had suffered under Tiberius, 
even the sisters of the emperor acquired a 
sacred character and a privileged position in 
the state. For the first time the women of the 
imperial family acquired the character of offi- 
cial personages. 

It cannot be denied that the transition from 
atrocious prosecutions to divine honors v^as 
somev^hat sudden, but this is merely a further 
proof that Caligula was endowed with a vio- 
lent, impulsive, and irreflective temperament. 
In any case, there was neither scandal nor pro- 
test at that time. Caligula during the first 
months of his rule was popular, not for his 
measures in favor of the women of his family, 
but for reasons of far greater importance. He 
had inaugurated a regime which promised to 
be more indulgent, more prodigal, less harsh 
than that of Tiberius. Extravagance had made 
rapid strides, especially in the ranks of the 
aristocracy, during the twenty-two years of 
Tiberius's rule: and although the latter, espe- 
cially toward the end of his life, had ceased 
struggling against this tendency, nevertheless 

229 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

his well-known aversion to sumptuous living, 
and the example of simplicity which he set 
before the eyes of all, had always been a cause 
of preoccupation to the aristocracy — to men as 
well as women. There was no certainty that 
the emperor might not again, some day, try to 
enforce the sumptuary laws. When Caligula 
therefore began his career, indicating very 
clearly his sympathies with the modernizing 
party by his eagerness to do away with the old 
Roman simplicity, the young aristocracy of 
both sexes did not conceal their satisfaction. 
After a long period of old-fashioned tradi- 
tional policy, enforced by the two preceding 
emperors, they welcomed with joy the young 
reformer who set out to introduce in the impe- 
rial government the spirit of the new genera- 
tions. No one was sorry that all the purveyors 
of voluptuousness, — mimes, singers, actors, 
dancers of both sexes, cooks, and puppets, 
— should with noisy joy break into the im- 
perial palace, which had been official, severe, 
and cold under Tiberius, and bring back pleas- 
ure, luxury, and festivals. All hoped that 

230 



THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA 

under the rule of this indulgent, youthful em- 
peror, life, especially at Rome, would become 
more pleasant and gay; and no one therefore 
felt disposed to protest against the official hon- 
ors which, contrary to custom, had been be- 
stowed upon the women of the imperial 
family. 

In truth, if he, still harking back to Egyp- 
tian ideas and customs, had been content with 
surrounding his family, especially its women, 
with a respect which would have protected 
them against the infamous accusations and 
iniquitous persecutions to which many had 
fallen victims, he might have had credit for 
an action which was good, just, and useful to 
the state. That strange condition of affairs 
which had been growing up under Tiberius 
was both absurd and dangerous to the country: 
the emperor was honored with extraordinary 
powers and made the object of a semi-religious 
veneration; but his family, and especially its 
women, were, as a sort of retribution, set out- 
side the laws and fiercely assailed in a thousand 
insidious ways. But the lunatic Caligula was not 

231 



THE WOMEN OF THE CiESARS 

the man to keep even a wise proposal within 
reasonable limits. Power, popularity, and 
praise quickly aroused all that was warped and 
excessive in his nature, and very soon, as he 
showed at the end of the year 37, he enter- 
tained an idea which must have seemed to the 
Romans a horrible impiety. His wife died 
soon after he became emperor. Another mar- 
riage seemed obligatory, and he decided that 
he would marry his sister Drusilla. 

Historians have represented this intention 
as the perverse delirium of an unbridled sen- 
suality. It was certainly the gross act of a 
madman, but there was perhaps more politics 
in his madness than perversity; for it was an 
attempt to introduce into Rome the dynastic 
marriages between brothers and sisters which 
had been the constant tradition of the Ptole- 
mies and the Pharaohs of Egypt. This 
oriental custom certainly seems a horrible 
aberration to us, who have been educated ac- 
cording to the strict and austere doctrines of 
Christianity, which, inheriting in these matters 
the fine flower of Greco-Latin ideas, has puri- 

232 



THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA 

fied and rendered them more rigorous. But 
for centuries in Egypt, — that is, in the most 
ancient of the Mediterranean civilizations, — 
this horrible aberration was looked upon as a 
sovereign privilege which brought the royal 
dynasty into relationship with the gods. By 
means of it, this family preserved the semi- 
divine purity of its blood; and perchance this 
custom, which had survived up to the fall of 
the Ptolemies, was only the projection of ideas 
and customs which in most ancient times had 
had a much wider diffusion along the Mediter- 
ranean world, for traces of it can be found 
even in Greek mythology. For were not Jupi- 
ter and Juno, who constituted the august Olym- 
pian couple, at the same time also brother and 
sister? Gradually restricted through the 
spreading of Greek civilization, this custom 
was finally eradicated at the shores of the 
Mediterranean by Rome after the destruction 
of the kingdom of the Ptolemies. 

The lunatic Caligula now suddenly took it 
into his head to transplant this custom to Rome 
— to transplant it with all the religious pomp 

233 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

of the Egyptian monarchy, and thus transform 
the family of Augustus, which up to the pres- 
ent had been merely the most eminent family 
of the Roman aristocracy, into a dynasty of 
gods and demigods, whose members were to 
be united by marriage among themselves in 
order not to pollute the celestial purity of their 
blood. A fraternal and divine pair were to 
rule at Rome, like another Arsinoe and Ptol- 
emy, whom the Alexandrian throngs had 
worshiped on the banks of the Nile. The 
idea had already matured in his mind at the 
end of the year 37, and among his three sisters 
he had already chosen Drusilla to be his wife. 
This is proved by a will made at the time of an 
illness which he contracted in the autumn of 
the first year of his rule. In this will he ap- 
pointed Drusilla heir not only of his goods, but 
also of his empire, a wild folly from the point 
of view of Roman ideas, which did not admit 
women to the government; but it proves that 
Caligula had already thought and acted like an 
Egyptian king. 

It is easy to understand why the peace and 

234 



THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA 

harmony which had been reestablished for a 
moment in the troubled imperial family by the 
advent of Caligula should have been of brief 
duration. His grandmother and his sisters 
were Romans, educated in Roman ideals, and 
this exotic madness of his could inspire in 
them only an irresistible horror. This brought 
confusion into the imperial family, and after 
having suffered the persecutions of Sejanus 
and his party, the unhappy daughters of Ger- 
manicus found themselves in the toils of the 
exacting caprices of their brother. In fact, in 
38, Caligula had already broken with his 
grandmother, whom the year before he had 
had proclaimed Augusta; and between the 
years 38 and 39, catastrophes followed one an- 
other in the family with frightful rapidity. His 
sister Drusilla, whom, as Suetonius tells us, he 
already treated as a lawful wife, died suddenly 
of some unknown malady while still very 
young. It is not improbable that her health 
may have been ruined by the horror of the 
wild adventure, which was neither human nor 
Roman, into which her brother sought to drag 

237 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

her by marriage. Caligula suddenly declared 
her a goddess, to whom all the cities must pay 
honors. He had a temple built for her, and 
appointed a body of twenty priests, ten men 
and ten women, to celebrate her worship; he 
decreed that her birthday should be a holiday, 
and he wished the statue of Venus in the 
Forum to be carved in her likeness. 

But in proportion as Caligula became more 
and more fervid in this adoration of his dead 
sister, the disagreement between himself and 
his other two sisters became niore embittered. 
Julia Li villa was exiled in 38; Agrippina, the 
wife of Domitius Enobarbus, in 39, and about 
this same time the venerable Antonia died. It 
was noised about that Caligula had forced her 
to commit suicide, and that Agrippina and 
Livilla had taken part in a conspiracy against 
the life of the emperor. How much truth there 
may be in these reports it is difficult to say, but 
the reason for all these catastrophes may be 
affirmed with certainty. Life in the imperial 
palace was no longer possible, especially for 
women, with this madman who was trans- 

238 



THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA 

forming Rome into Alexandria and who 
wished to marry a sister. Even Tiberius, the 
son of Drusus and co-heir to the empire with 
Caligula, was at about this time defeated in 
some obscure suit and disappeared. 

Caligula therefore remained alone at Rome 
to represent in the imperial palace the family 
which only ironically can be considered as the 
most fortunate in Rome. Of three generations, 
upon whom fate seemed to have showered all 
the gifts of life, there remained at his side only 
Claudius, the clownish old man, the plaything 
of slaves and freedmen, whom no one mo- 
lested because all could make game of him. A 
madman and an imbecile, — or at least one who 
was reputed such by everybody, — this was all 
that remained of the family of Augustus sev- 
enty years after the battle of Actium. 

Alone, with no sisters now to elevate to the 
divine honors of the Roman Olympus, Caligula 
was reduced to hunting for wives in the fam- 
ilies of the aristocracy. But it seems that even 
there could be found no great abundance of 
women who had all the necessary qualities to 

239 



THE WOMEN OF THE CiESARS 

make them the Olympian consorts of so capri- 
cious a god. In three years he married and 
repudiated three — and in a very strange man- 
ner, if we are to trust the ancient accounts of 
Caligula's loves. The first was Livia Orestilla, 
the wife of Caius Piso. The emperor, who had 
seen the woman at the marriage celebration, 
became, we are told, so infatuated with her 
that he obliged the husband to divorce her; he 
then married her, and a few days later repu- 
diated her. Caligula is said to have compared 
himself on this occasion to Romulus who rav- 
ished the Sabine woman, and to Augustus who 
raped Livia. The second was Lollia Paulina, 
wife of Caius Memmius, proconsul of a dis- 
tant province. Caligula heard of the pro- 
digious beauty of LoUia's grandmother. The 
portrayal of her charms made him fall in love 
with her granddaughter, though absent and 
distant. He gave orders for her immediate 
recall to Rome, and as soon as she could be 
divorced from her husband he married her. 
This union, like the former one, lasted only a 
brief time. The third wife was Milonia Caeso- 

240 




I-roiu tlic slatuf in the Mu?eo Naziuiiale, Naples 

THE EMPEROR CALIGULA 



THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA 

nia, and to her Caligula was more faithful, 
though from the accounts of ancient writers 
she appears to have been much older than he, 
rather homely, and already a mother of three 
daughters when he first loved her. It is diffi- 
cult to determine how much truth there is in 
these reports: Caligula was, it is true, a raving 
maniac, and his frenzy became more accentu- 
ated when under the sway of love — a passion 
which deranges somewhat even wise men. It is 
not strange, therefore, that in regard to women 
he may have been guilty of even greater excesses 
than he was capable of in his dealings with 
men. Yet some of these accounts seem a little 
incredible even when ascribed to a madman. 
However that may be, Livia Orestilla, Lollia 
Paulina, Milonia Caesonia are figures without 
relief, shades and ghosts of empresses, no one 
of whom had time enough even to occupy the 
highest post. In vain the people expected that 
there would appear in the imperial palace a 
worthy successor to Livia. Caligula, like all 
madmen, was by nature solitary, and could not 
live with other human beings: he was to re- 
^2 243 



THE WOMEN OF THE CiESARS 

main alone, a prey to his ravings, which be- 
came even stranger and more violent. He now 
wished to impose upon the empire the worship 
of his own person, without considering any 
opposition or Local traditions and supersti- 
tions. In doing this he did violence not only to 
the civic and republican sentiment of Italy, 
which detested this worship of a living man as 
an ignoble oriental adulation, but also to the 
religious feeling of the Hebrews, to whom this 
cult appeared most horrible and idolatrous. 

In this way difficulties, dissatisfaction, and 
sedition arose in all parts of the empire. The 
extravagances, the wild expenditures, the riot- 
ous pleasures, and the cruelties of Caligula 
increased the discontent and disgust on every 
hand. We need not take literally all the ac- 
counts of his cruelty and violence which an- 
cient writers have transmitted to us, — even 
Caligula has been blackened, — but it is certain 
that his government in the last two years of his 
reign degenerated into a reckless, extravagant, 
violent, and cruel tyranny. One day the em- 
pire awoke in terror to the fact that the im- 

244 



THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA 

perial family — that family in which the 
legions, the provinces, and the barbarians saw 
the keystone of the state — no longer existed; 
that in the vast imperial palace, empty of 
women, empty of children, empty of hope, 
there wandered a raging madman of thirty- 
one, who divorced a wife every six months, 
who foolishly wasted the treasure and the 
blood of his subjects, and who was concerned 
with no other thought than that of having him- 
self worshiped like a god in flesh and blood by 
all the empire. A conspiracy was formed in 
the palace itself, and Caligula was killed. ^-^ 

The senate was much perplexed when it heard 
of the death of Caligula. What was to be 
done? The majority was inclined to restore 
the former republican government by abolish- 
ing the imperial authority, and to give back to 
the senate the supreme direction of the state, 
which little by little had passed into the hands 
of the emperor. But many recognized that 
this return to the ancient form of government 
would be neither easy nor without danger. 

245 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

Could the senate, neglected, divided, and dis- 
regarded as it was, succeed in governing the 
immense empire? On the other hand, it was 
not much easier to find an emperor, granted 
that an emperor was henceforth necessary. In 
the family of Augustus there was only Clau- 
dius, too foolish and ridiculous for them to 
think of making him the head of the state. It 
seems that some eminent senator offered his 
candidacy, but the senate hesitated in per- 
plexity, on the ground that if the authority of 
the members of the family of Augustus was 
already so uncertain, so debatable, and so 
darkly threatened, what would happen to a 
new emperor, unknown to the legions and the 
provinces, and unsupported by the glory of his 
ancestors? While the senate was debating in 
such uncertainty, the pretorians discovered 
Claudius in a corner of the imperial palace, 
where he had been cowering through fear lest 
he too be killed. Recognizing in him the 
brother of Germanicus, the pretorians pro- 
claimed him emperor. An act of will is always 
more powerful than a thousand scruples or 

246 




CLAUDIUS 

From the bust in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence 



THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA 

hesitations: the senate yielded to the legions, 
and recognized Claudius the imbecile as em- 
peror. 

But Claudius was not an imbecile, although 
he appeared such to many. Instead, he was, 
so to speak, a man half -grown, in whom cer- 
tain parts of the mind were highly developed, 
but whose character had remained that of a 
child, timid, capricious, impulsive, giddy, and 
incapable of self-mastery. In intellect he was 
learned, even cultivated; he was fond of 
studies, of history, literature, and archaeology, 
and spoke and wrote well. But Augustus had 
been forced to give up the attempt to have him 
enter upon a political career because he had 
been unable to make him acquire even that ex- 
terior bearing which confers the necessary 
dignity upon him who exercises great power, 
to say nothing of the firmness, precision, and 
force of will required in governing men. 
Credulous, timorous, impressionable, and at 
the same time obstinate, gluttonous, and sen- 
sual, this erudite, overgrown boy had become 
in the imperial palace a kind of plaything for 

249 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

everybody, especially for his slaves, who, 
knowing his defects and his weaknesses, did 
with him what they wished. 

He did not lack the intellectual qualities nec- 
essary for governing well, but of the moral 
qualities he had none. He was intelligent, and 
he looked stupid: he was able to consider the 
great questions of politics, war, and finance 
with breadth of view, with original and acute 
intelligence, but he never succeeded in having 
himself taken seriously by the persons who 
surrounded him. He dared undertake great 
projects, like the conquest of Britain, and he 
lost his head at the wildest fable about con- 
spiracy which one of his intimates told him; 
he had mind sufficient to govern the empire as 
well as Augustus and Tiberius had done, but 
he could not succeed in getting obedience from 
four or five slaves or from his own wife. 

Such a man was destined to turn out a rather 
odd emperor, at once great and ridiculous. He 
made important laws, undertook gigantic pub- 
lic works and conquests of great moment; but 
in his own house he was a weak husband, in- 

250 



THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA 

capable of exercising any sort of authority 
over his wife. With these conjugal weak- 
nesses he seriously compromised the imperial 
authority, while at the same time he was con- 
solidating it and rendering it illustrious with 
beautiful and wise achievements, especially in 
the first seven years of his rule, while he lived 
with Valeria Messalina. 

We must admit in his justification that in 
this matter he had not been particularly for- 
tunate; for fate had given him to wife a lady 
who, notwithstanding her illustrious ances- 
tors, — she belonged to one of the greatest 
families of Rome, related to the family of 
Augustus, — ^was not exactly suited to be his 
companion in the imperial dignity. Every one 
knows that the name of Valeria Messalina has 
become in history synonymous with all the 
faults and all the vices of which a woman can 
be guilty. This, as usual, is the result of envy 
and malevolence which never offered truce to 
the family of Augustus as long as any of its 
members lived. Many of the infamies which 
are attributed to her are evidently fables, com- 

251 



THE WOMEN OF THE CiESARS 

placently repeated by Tacitus and Suetonius, 
and easily believed by posterity. But it is cer- 
tain that if Messalina was not a monster, she 
was a beautiful woman, capricious, gay, 
powerful, reckless, avid of luxury and of 
money, who had never scrupled to abuse the 
weakness of her husband in any way either by 
deceiving him or by obliging him to follow her 
will and her caprice in everything. She was a 
woman, in short, neither very virtuous nor 
serious. There are such women at all times 
and in all social classes, and they are generally 
considered by the majority not as monsters, 
but as a pleasing, though dangerous, variety of 
the feminine sex. Under normal conditions, 
nevertheless, when the husband exercises a 
certain energy and sagacity, even the danger 
which may result from them is relatively 
slight. 

But chance had made of Messalina an em- 
press, and Messalina was not a sufficiently in- 
telligent or serious woman to understand that 
if she had been able to abuse the weakness of 
Claudius with impunity while he had been the 

252 



THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA 

most obscure member of the imperial family, 
it was a much more difQcult matter to con- 
tinue to abuse it after he had become the head 
of the state. It was from this error that all 
their difficulties arose. Elated by her new 
position, Messalina more than ever took ad- 
vantage of her husband's infirmity. She began 
by starting new dissensions in the imperial 
family. Claudius had recalled to Rome the 
two victims of Caligula's Egyptian caprices, 
Agrippina and Julia Li villa; but if the latter 
no longer found a brother in Rome to per- 
secute them, they did find their aunt, and they 
had gained but little by the exchange. Messa- 
lina soon took umbrage at the influence which 
the two sisters acquired over the mind of their 
weak-willed uncle, and it was not long before 
Julia Livilla was accused under the Lex de 
adulteriis, and exiled with Seneca, the famous 
philosopher, whom they wished rightly or 
wrongly to pass off as her lover. Agrippina, 
like her mother, was a virtuous woman, as is 
proved by the fact that she could not be at- 
tacked with such weapons and was enabled to 

253 



THE WOMEN OF THE C.ESARS 

remain in Rome; though she also had to live 
prudently and beware of her enemy, and 
much the more as she had only recently be- 
come a widow and could therefore not even 
count upon the protection of a husband. 
Though Agrippina remained at Rome, she was 
isolated and reduced to a position of helpless- 
ness. 

Messalina alone, together with four or five 
intelligent and unscrupulous freedmen, hedged 
Claudius about, and there began the period of 
their common government — a government of 
incredible waste and extortion. Among these 
freedmen there were, to be sure, men like Nar- 
cissus and Pallas, intelligent and sagacious, 
who did not aim merely at putting money into 
their purses, but who helped Claudius to gov- 
ern the empire properly. Messalina, on the 
other hand, thought only of acquiring wealth, 
that she might dissipate it in luxury and plea- 
sures. The wife of the emperor had been sell- 
ing her influence to the sovereign allies and 
vassals, to all the rich personages of the em- 
pire, who desired to obtain any sort of favor 

254 



THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA 

from the imperial authority; she had been 
seen bartering with the contractors for public 
works, mingling in the financial affairs of the 
state every time that there was any occasion 
to make money. And with the money thus 
amassed she indulged in ostentatious displays 
which violated all the prohibitions of the Lex 
sumptuaria, leading a life of unseemly plea- 
sures, in which it is easy to imagine what sort 
of example of all the finer feminine virtues she 
set. Claudius either knew nothing of all this 
or else submitted without protest. 

Messalina then, with her peculiar levity of 
character and violence of temperament, con- 
tinued to emphasize the modernizing Asiatic 
tendency introduced by Caligula into the state, 
and was influential in destroying the puritanic 
traditions of Rome and replacing them by the 
corruption and pomp of Asia. Her role was 
exactly the opposite of that of Livia. The lat- 
ter had been the embodiment of the conserva- 
tive virtues of traditionalism: the former by 
her egoism, her extravagance, and her wanton- 
ness was in a fair way to destroy all such tra- 

255 



THE WOMEN OF THE C.ESARS 

ditions. Livia had been almost a vestal in her 
fight for the puritanism of old Rome: Messa- 
lina most ardently and violently fought to de- 
stroy it. 

Such an empress, however, could hardly 
please the public. While those who profited by 
her dissipations greatly admired Messalina, a 
lively movement of protest was soon started 
among the people, for they, unlike many of the 
aristocrats, who affected modern views and 
who pretended to scorn the traditions of an- 
cient Rome, were faithful to all such puritanical 
traditions and wished to see at their emperor's 
side a lady adorned with all the fairer virtues 
of the ancient matron — ^with those virtues, in 
short, which Livia had personified with such 
dignity. How could they tolerate this sort of 
dissipated Bacchante, who should have been 
condemned to infamy and exile with the many 
other Roman women who had been faithless to 
their husbands; who with the effrontery of her 
unpunished crimes dishonored and rendered 
ridiculous the imperial authority? 

To the middle classes the emperor was a semi- 

256 



^'^4,^^^^.>^ 




From the bust in the \'atican Museum 

THE EMPEROR CLAUDIUS 



THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA 

sacred magistrate, charged with maintaining 
by law and example the purity of the family, 
fidelity in marital relations, and simplicity 
of customs. Now, to their amazement, they 
saw in the person of the empress all the dis- 
sipations, corruptions, and perversions of the 
woman who wished to live only for her plea- 
sure, to enjoy her beauty, and to have others 
enjoy it, enthroned, to the scandal of all honest 
minds, in the palace of the emperor. Further- 
more, it seemed to every one a scandal that one 
who was an emperor should at the same time 
be a weak husband; for the simple good sense 
of the Latin would not admit that a man who 
could govern an empire should not be able to 
command a woman. It soon became the gen- 
eral opinion of all reasonable people that Mes- 
salina, in the position of Livia upon the 
Palatine, and with so weak a husband, was 
not only a scandal, but also a continual menace 
to the public. 

Nevertheless, it would now have been no 
easy matter, even if the emperor had wished 
it, to convict an empress of infidelity and dis- 

259 



THE WOMEN OF THE CiESARS 

obedience to one of the great laws of Augustus. 
Caligula was a madman and had been able to 
secure three divorces, but a wiser emperor 
would have to think for a long time before 
rendering public the shame and scandals of his 
family, especially when confronted with an 
aristocracy which was as eager to suspect and 
calumniate as was the aristocracy of Rome. 
But the problem became hopeless as soon as 
the emperor did not see or did not wish to see 
the faults of his wife. Would any one dare to 
step forward and accuse the empress? 

The situation gradually became grave and 
dangerous. The state, governed with intelli- 
gence, but without energy, with vast contradic- 
tions and hesitations, was being strengthened 
along certain lines and was going to pieces 
along others. The power and extortions of the 
freedmen were breeding discontent on every 
hand. Both through what she really did, and 
what the populace said she had done, Messa- 
lina was being transformed by the people into 
a legendary personage whose infamous deeds 
aroused general indignation; but all in vain. 

260 



THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA 

It now became quite evident that an empress 
was virtually invulnerable, and that, once 
enthroned upon the Palatine, there was no 
effective means of protesting against the va- 
rious ways in which she could abuse her lofty 
position unless the emperor wished to inter- 
fere. In its exasperation, the public finally 
vented upon Claudius the anger which the 
violence and misconduct of Messalina had 
aroused. They declared that it was his weak- 
ness which was responsible for her conduct; 
and intrigues, deeds of violence, conspiracies, 
and attempts at civil war became, as Suetonius 
says, every-day occurrences at Rome. 

A sense of insecurity and doubt was spread- 
ing throughout the state as a result of the in- 
decision of the emperor, and all began to ask 
themselves how long a government could last 
which was at the mercy of a wanton. The vio- 
lent death of Caligula, which was still fresh in 
the minds of the people, added to this wide- 
spread feeling of insecurity and alarm. As 
Caligula, notwithstanding the pontifical sacred- 
ness of his person, had been slain, to the ap- 

261 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

parent satisfaction of everybody, in his palace 
by a handful of his supposed friends and sup- 
porters, it seemed possible that the tragedy 
might easily be repeated in the case of Clau- 
dius. Could not the whole Claudian govern- 
ment be overturned, — in a single night, perhaps, 
as that of Caligula had been overturned? All 
hearts were filled with suspicion, distrust, and 
alarm, and many concluded that since Clau- 
dius had not succeeded in ridding the empire 
of Messalina it would be well to rid it of Clau- 
dius. 

So for seven years Messalina remained the 
great weakness of a government which pos- 
sessed signal merits and accomplished great 
things. Of all the emperors in the family of 
Augustus, Claudius was certainly the one 
whose life was most seriously threatened, espe- 
cially because of his wife. Such a situation 
could not endure. 

It finally resolved itself into a tragic scan- 
dal, which, if we could believe Suetonius and 
Tacitus, would certainly have been the most 
monstrous extravagance to which an imagina- 

262 




From the bust in the Capitoline Museum 

MESSALINA, THIRD WIFE OF CLAUDIUS 



THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA 

tion depraved by power could have abandoned 
itself. According to these writers, Messalina, 
at a loss for some new form of dissipation, one 
fine day took it into her head to marry Silius, a 
young man with whom she was very much in 
love, who belonged to a distinguished family, 
and who was the consul-designate. According 
to them, for the pleasure of shocking the im- 
perial city with the sacrilege of a bigamous 
union, she actually did marry him in Rome, 
with the most solemn religious rites, while 
Claudius was at Ostia! But is this credible, at 
least without admitting that Messalina had sud- 
denly gone insane? To what end and for what 
reason would she have committed such a sacri- 
lege, which struck at the very heart of popular 
sentiment? Dissolute, cruel, and avaricious 
Messalina certainly was, but mad she was not. 
And even if we are willing to admit that she 
had gone mad, is it conceivable that all those 
who would have had to lend her their services 
in the staging of this revolting farce had also 
gone mad? It is difficult to suppose that they 
acted through fear, for the empress had no 
1^ 265 



THE WOMEN OF THE C.ESARS 

such power in Rome that she could constrain 
conspicuous persons publicly to commit such 
sacrilege. 

This episode would probably be an unfath- 
omable enigma had not Suetonius by chance 
given us the key to its solution: "Nam illud 
omnem fidem excesserit, quod nuptiis, quas 
Messalina cum adultero Silio fecerat, ta- 
bellas dotis et ipse consignaverit" ("For 
that which would pass all belief is the fact 
that in the marriage which Messalina con- 
tracted with the adulterer Silius, he himself 
[Claudius] should have signed the figures for 
the dowry"). H' Claudius himself gave a 
dowry to the bride, he therefore knew that the 
marriage of Messalina and Silius was to take 
place; and it is precisely this fact which seems 
so incredible to Suetonius. But we know that 
in the Roman aristocracy a man could give 
away his own wife in this manner; for have we 
not recounted in this present history how Livia 
was dowered and given in marriage to Augus- 
tus by her first husband, the grandfather of 
Claudius? The deeding of a wife with a dowry 

266 



THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA 

was a part of the somewhat bizarre marriage 
customs of the Roman aristocracy, which 
gradually lost ground in the first and second 
century of our era in proportion as the prestige 
and power of that aristocracy declined, and in 
proportion as the middle classes acquired in- 
fluence in the state and succeeded in imposing 
upon it their ideas and sentiments. The pas- 
sage in Suetonius proves to us that he no longer 
understood this matrimonial custom, and it is 
doubtful whether even Tacitus thoroughly 
understood it. Nor is it improbable that it 
should have seemed strange even to many of 
the contemporaries of Claudius. We could 
therefore explain how, not really understand- 
ing what had happened, the historians of the 
following century should have believed that 
Messalina had married Silius while she was 
still the wife of Claudius. 

In short, Claudius had been persuaded to 
divorce Messalina and to marry her to Silius. 
The passage from Suetonius, if carefully in- 
terpreted, clearly tells us this. What means 
were employed to persuade Claudius to con- 

267 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

sent to this new marriage we do not know. 
Suetonius refers to this, but he is not clear. In 
any case, this point is less important than that 
other question: Why was Messalina, after 
seven years of empire, willing to divorce Clau- 
dius and marry Silius? The problem is not an 
easy one, but after long examination I have 
decided to accept with slight modification the 
explanation given by Umberto Silvagni in his 
beautiful work, "The Empire and the Women 
of the Caesars," a book which contains many 
original ideas and much acute observation. 

Silvagni, who is an excellent student of 
Roman history, has well brought out how Sil- 
ius belonged to a family of the aristocracy 
famous for its devotion to the party of Ger- 
manicus and Agrippina. His father, who had 
been a great friend of Germanicus, had been 
one of the victims of Sejanus, and accused in 
the time of Tiberius under the law of high trea- 
son, he had committed suicide. His mother, 
Sosia Galla, had been condemned to exile 
on account of her devotion to Agrippina. 
Starting out with these considerations, and 

268 




From a photog^raph by Anderson of the bust 
ill the Mnseo Nazionale 



THE PHILOSOPHER SENECA 



THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA 

examining acutely the accounts of all the an- 
cient historians, Silvagni concluded that be- 
hind this marriage there lay a conspiracy to 
ruin Claudius and to put Caius Silius in his 
place. Messalina must sooner or later have 
felt that the situation was an impossible one, 
that Claudius was not a sufficiently strong or 
energetic emperor to be able to impose the 
disorganized government of himself and his 
freedmen upon the empire, and that any day 
he might fall a prey to a plot or an assassina- 
tion. What would happen, she must have 
asked herself, if Claudius, like Caligula, should 
some day be despatched by a conspiracy? The 
same fate would doubtless be waiting for her, 
for, having killed him, the conspirators would 
certainly murder her also. Consequently she 
entertained the idea of ruining the emperor 
herself in order to contribute to the elevation 
of his successor, and thus to preserve at his 
side the position which she had occupied in the 
court of Claudius. But once Claudius had been 
slain, there would be no other member of the 
family of Augustus old enough to govern. She 

271 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

therefore decided to choose him in a family 
famous for its devotion to Germanicus and the 
more popular branch of the house, thus hop- 
ing the more easily to win over the legions and 
the pretorians to the cause of the nev^ emperor. 
Since the descendants of Drusus were dead, 
what other option remained to her than to 
choose a successor in the families of the aris- 
tocracy who had shown for them the greatest 
devotion and love? 

Thus, for the first time, a woman was placed 
at the head of a really vast political conspiracy 
destined to wrest the supreme power from the 
family of Augustus; and this woman proved 
her sagacity by knowing how to organize this 
great plot so well and so opportunely that the 
most intelligent and influential among the 
freedmen of Claudius debated for a long time 
whether they would join her or throw in their 
lot with the emperor. So doubtful seemed the 
issue of this struggle between the weak hus- 
band and the energetic, audacious, and un- 
scrupulous wife! They allowed Messalina and 
Silius to enlist friends and partizans in every 

272 



THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA 

part of Roman society, to come to an under- 
standing with the prefect of the guards, to 
obtain the divorce from Claudius, even to 
celebrate their marriage, without opening the 
eyes of the emperor. Claudius would probably 
have been destroyed if at the last moment Nar- 
cissus had not decided to rush to the emperor, 
who was at Ostia, and, by terrifying him in 
some unspeakable way, had not induced him 
to stamp out the conspiracy with a bold and 
unexpected stroke. There followed one of 
those periods of judicial murder which for 
more than thirty years had been costing much 
Roman blood, and in this slaughter Messalina, 
too, was overthrown. 

After the discovery of the conspiracy, Clau- 
dius made a harangue to the soldiers, in which 
he told them that as he had not been very suc- 
cessful in his marriages he did not intend to 
take another wife. The proposal was wise, 
but difficult of execution, for there were many 
reasons why the emperor needed to have a 
woman at his side. We very soon find Clau- 
dius consulting his freedmen on the choice of 

273 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

a new wife. There was much discussion and 
uncertainty, but the choice finally fell upon 
Agrippina. That choice was significant. Agrip- 
pina was the niece of Claudius, and marriages 
between uncle and niece, if not exactly pro- 
hibited, were looked upon by the Romans with 
a profound revulsion of feeling. Claudius and 
his freedmen could not have decided to face 
this repugnance except for serious and impor- 
tant reasons. Among these the most serious 
was probably that after the experience with 
Messalina, it seemed best not to go outside the 
family. An empress belonging to the family 
would not be so likely to plot against the de- 
scendants of Augustus as had been this strange 
woman, who belonged to one of those aristo- 
cratic families who deeply hated the imperial 
house. Agrippina, furthermore, was the 
daughter of Germanicus. This was a power- 
ful recommendation with the people, the 
pretorian cohorts, and the legions. In addi- 
tion, she was intelligent, cultured, simple, and 
economical; she had grown up in the midst of 
political affairs, she knew how the empire was 

274 



THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA 

governed, and up to this point she had lived a 
life above reproach. She seemed to be the 
v^oman above all others destined to make the 
people forget Messalina and to reestablish 
among the masses respect for the family of 
Augustus, now seriously compromised by 
many scandals and dissensions. Furthermore, 
she did not seem to suffer too much by com- 
parison with Livia. 

Claudius asked the senate to authorize mar- 
riages between uncles and nieces, as he did not 
dare to assume the responsibility of going 
counter to public sentiment. And thus the 
daughter of Germanicus and the sister of Calig- 
ula became an empress. 



275 



VI 

AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO 

IT is possible, as Tacitus says, that marriage 
with Claudius was the height of Agrippina's 
ambition, but it is also possible that it was an 
act of supreme self-sacrifice on the part of a 
woman who had been educated in the tradi- 
tions of the Roman aristocracy, and who there- 
fore considered herself merely a means to the 
political advancement of her relatives and her 
children. 

I am rather inclined to accept this second ex- 
planation. When she married Claudius, Agrip- 
pina not only married an uncle who was much 
older than herself, and who must necessarily 
prove a rather difficult and disagreeable hus- 
band, but she bound up her fate with that of a 
weak emperor whose life was continually 
threatened by plots and revolts, and whose hesi- 
tations and terrors plainly portended that he 

276 



AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO 

would one day end by precipitating the impe- 
rial authority and government into some bi- 
zarre and terrible catastrophe. For Agrippina 
it meant that she was blindly staking her life 
and her honor, and that she would lose them 
both should she fail to compensate for the in- 
numerable deficiencies of her strange husband 
through her own intelligence and strength of 
will. Every one will recognize how difficult 
was the task which she had undertaken. 

But at the beginning fortune favored Agrip- 
pina as she boldly took up the work that lay 
before her. The wild pranks of Caligula and 
the scandals of Messalina had aroused an im- 
measurable disgust in Rome and Italy. Every 
one was out of patience. The senate as well as 
the people were demanding a stronger, more 
coherent, and respectable government, which 
would end the scandals, suits, and atrocious 
personal and family quarrels which were di- 
viding Rome. Agrippina was the daughter of 
Germanicus, the granddaughter of Drusus, and 
she had in her veins the blood of the Claudii, 
with all their pride, their energy, their puri- 

277 



THE WOMEN OF TH.E CAESARS 

tanical, conservative, and aristocratic spirit, 
and the moment she appeared, all hopes were 
centered in her. Although she was a sort of 
feminine Tiberius, and in the purity of her life 
resembled her mother and her great-grand- 
mother Livia, Tacitus nevertheless maligns her 
for her relationships with Pallas and Seneca. 
The fact that Messalina, even with her implaca- 
ble hatred, failed to bring about her downfall 
under the Lex de adulteriis, proves the unrelia- 
bility of these statements, and Tacitus proves it 
himself when he says that she suffered no de- 
parture from chastity unless it helped her 
power {Nihil domi impudicum nisi domina- 
tioni expediret). This means that Agrippina 
was a lady of irreproachable life; for if there 
is one thing which stands out clearly in the his- 
tory of this remarkable woman, it is that both 
her rise and her fall depended upon causes of 
such a nature that not even her womanly 
charms could have increased her power or re- 
tarded her ruin. All hearts were therefore 
filled with hope when they saw this respectable, 
active, and energetic woman take her place at 

278 




liMMHS^Sii^IW^ 



L phototrraph by Alinari of the bust in the 
Uffizi Gallery, Florence 



THE EMPEROR NERO 



AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO 

the side of Claudius the weakling, for she 
brought back the memory of the most vener- 
ated personages of the family of Augustus. 

The new empress, encouraged by this show 
of favor, applied herself with all the strength 
of her impassioned nature to the task of again 
making operative in the state those traditional 
ideas of the nobility in which Livia had edu- 
cated first Tiberius and Drusus, then Germani- 
cus, and then Agrippina herself. In this 
descendant of hers the spirit of the great-grand- 
mother finally reappeared, for it had been 
eclipsed by the fatal and terrible struggle be- 
tween Tiberius and Agrippina, by the madness 
of Caligula, and the comic scandals of the first 
part of the reign of Claudius. All this served 
to bring back into the state a little of that 
authoritative vigor which the nobility in the 
time of its splendor had considered the highest 
ideal of government. Tacitus says of her rule 
that it was as rigid as if a man's (adductum et 
quasi virile). This signifies that under the in- 
fluence of Agrippina the laxity and disorder of 
the first years of Claudius's reign gave place to 

281 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

a certain order and discipline. Severity there 
was, and more often haughtiness {palam seve- 
ritas ac saepius superbia) . The freedmen who 
had formerly been so powerful and aggressive, 
now stepped aside, which is an evident sign 
that their petulance had now found a check in 
the energy of Agrippina. The state finances 
and the fortune of the imperial house were 
reorganized, for Agrippina, like Livia and like 
all the ladies of the great Roman nobility, was 
an excellent administrator, frugal, and ever 
watchful of her slaves and freedmen, and care- 
ful of all items of income and expense. The 
Roman aristocracy, like all other aristocracies, 
hated the parvenus, the men of sudden riches, 
traffickers who had too quickly become 
wealthy, and all persons whose only aim was 
to amass money. We know that Agrippina 
sought to prevent as far as possible the mal- 
versations of public funds by which the power- 
ful freedmen of Claudius had been enriching 
themselves. After she became empress we 
hear accounts of numerous suits instituted 
against personages who had been guilty of 

282 



AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO 

wasting public treasure, while under Messalina 
no such cases were brought forward. We 
know, furthermore, that she reestablished the 
fortune of the imperial family, which in all 
probability had been seriously compromised 
by the reckless expenditures of Messalina. 
This is what Tacitus refers to in one of his 
sentences, which, as usual, is colored by his 
malignity: Cupido auri immensa obtentum 
habebat quasi subsidium regno pararetur (She 
sought to enrich the family under the pretext 
of providing for the needs of the empire). 
What Tacitus calls a "pretext" was, on the con- 
trary, the ancient aristocratic conception of 
wealth, which in the eyes of the great families 
was destined to be a means of government and 
an instrument of power: the family possessed 
it in order to use it for the benefit of the 
state. 

In short, Agrippina attempted to revive the 
aristocratic traditions of government which 
had inspired the policies of Augustus and Ti- 
berius. Not only did she attempt to do this, 
but, strange as it may seem, she succeeded al- 

283 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

most without a struggle. The government of 
Agrippina was from the first a great success. 
From the moment when she became empress 
there is discernible in the entire administra- 
tion a greater firmness and consistency of 
policy. Claudius no longer seems, as formerly, 
to be at the mercy of his freedmen and the 
fleeting impulses of the moment, and even the 
dark shadows of the time are lighted up for 
some years. A certain concord and tranquillity 
returned to the imperial house, to the aristoc- 
racy, to the senate, and to the state. Although 
Tacitus accuses Agrippina of having made 
Claudius commit all sorts of cruelties, it is 
certain that trials, scandals, and suicide be- 
came much less frequent under her rule. Dur- 
ing the six years that Claudius lived after his 
marriage with Agrippina, scandalous tragedies 
became so rare that Tacitus, being deprived of 
his favorite materials, set down the story of 
these six years in a single book. In other 
words, Agrippina encountered virtually no 
opposition, while Tiberius and even Augustus, 
when they wished to govern according to the 

284 



(V) 




From a photojjraph by D. Alessandri of the statue 
in the Lateran Museum 

AGRIPPINA THE YOUNGER, SISTER OF 
CALIGULA AND MOTHER OF NERO 



AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO 

traditions of the ancient nobility, had to com- 
bat the party of the new aristocracy, with its 
modern and oriental tendencies. This party 
no longer seemed to exist when Agrippina 
urged Claudius to continue resolutely in the 
policy of his ancestors, for one party only, that 
of the old nobility, seemed with Agrippina to 
control the state. This must have been the 
result partly of the disgust for the scandals of 
the previous decade, which had made every 
one realize the need of restoring more serious 
discipline in the government, and partly of the 
exhaustion which had come upon both parties 
as the result of so many struggles, reprisals, 
suits, and scandals. The force of the opposi- 
tion in the two factions gradually diminished. 
A greater gentleness induced all to accept the 
direction of the government without resis- 
tance, and the authority of the emperor and his 
counselors acquired greater importance in 
proportion as the strength of the opposition in 
the aristocracy and the senate became gradu- 
ally weaker. 

In any case, the empire was no longer to 

^* 287 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

have forced upon it the ridiculous and scan- 
dalous spectacle of such weaknesses and in- 
congruities as had seriously compromised the 
prestige of the highest authority in the first 
period of the reign of Claudius. But Agrip- 
pina was not content with merely making 
provision as best she could for the present; 
she also looked forward to the future. She 
had had a son by her first husband, and at the 
time of her marriage with Claudius this youth 
was about eleven years old. It is in connec- 
tion with her plans for this son that Tacitus 
brings his most serious charges against Agrip- 
pina. According to his story, from the first 
day of her marriage Agrippina attempted to 
make of her son, the future Emperor Nero, 
the successor of Claudius, thereby excluding 
Britannicus, the son of Messalina, from the 
throne. 

To obtain this end, she spared, he says, 
neither intrigues, fraud, nor deceit; she had 
Seneca recalled from exile and appointed 
tutor of her child. She removed from office 
the two commanders of the pretorian guard, 

288 



AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO 

who were creatures of Messalina, and in their 
stead she had elected one of her own, a cer- 
tain Afranius Burrhus. She laid pitfalls for 
Britannicus and surrounded him with spies, 
and in the year 50, by dint of much intrigue 
and many caresses, she finally succeeded in 
having Claudius adopt her son. But this 
whole story is merely a complicated and fan- 
tastic romance, embroidered about a truth 
which in itself is comparatively simple. Tac- 
itus himself tells us that Agrippina was a most 
exacting mother; that is, a mother of the older 
Roman type — in his own words, trux et minax. 
She did not follow the gentle methods of the 
newer education, which were gradually being 
introduced into the great families, and she 
had brought up her son in the ancient manner 
with the greatest simplicity. It is well to keep 
in mind, furthermore, that neither Britannicus 
nor Nero had any right to the throne of Clau- 
dius. The hereditary principle did not yet 
exist in the imperial government: the senate 
was free to choose whomsoever it wished. To 
be sure, up to that time the choice had always 

289 



THE WOMEN OF THE CiESARS 

fallen upon a member of the Augustan family; 
but it had only been because it was easier to 
find there persons who were known and re- 
spected, who commanded the admiration of the 
soldiers in distant regions, and who had re- 
ceived a certain preparation for the diverse 
and often difficult duties of their office. And 
it was precisely for this reason that Augustus 
and Tiberius had always sought to prepare 
more than one youth for the highest office, 
both in order that the senate might have a cer- 
tain freedom of choice, and also that there 
might be some one in reserve, in case one of 
these young men should disappoint the hopes 
of the empire or should die prematurely, as so 
many others had died. That she should have 
persuaded Claudius to adopt her son does not 
mean, therefore, that she wished to set Britan- 
nicus aside and give the advantage to Nero. It 
merely proves that she did not wish the family 
of Augustus to lose the supreme power, and 
for this reason she intended to prepare not 
only one successor, but two possible succes- 
sors, to Claudius, just as Augustus had for a 

290 




iToni the statue in Kome 

BRITANNICUS 



AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO 

long time trained both Drusus and Tibe- 
rius. 

In order to understand how wise and reason- 
able the conduct of Agrippina really was, we 
must also remember that Nero was four years 
older than Britannicus? and that, therefore, in 
the year 50, when Nero was adopted, Britanni- 
cus was a mere lad of nine. As Claudius was 
already sixty, it would have been most impru- 
dent to designate a nine-year-old lad as his 
only possible successor, when Nero, who was 
four years his senior, would have been better 
prepared than Britannicus to take up the reign. 
There is a further proof that Agrippina had no 
thought of destroying the race of Claudius and 
Messalina, for before his adoption she had 
married Nero to Octavia, the daughter of the 
imperial pair. Octavia was a woman pos- 
sessed of all the virtues which the ancient 
Roman nobility had cherished. She was chaste, 
modest, patient, gentle, and unselfish, and she 
would be able to assist in strengthening the 
power of her house. Agrippina had therefore, 
in the ancient manner, affianced the young pair 

293 



THE WOMEN OF THE CESARS 

at an early age, and hoped that she might make 
a couple which would serve as an example to 
the families of the aristocracy. 

In short, Agrippina, far from seeking to 
weaken the imperial house by destroying the 
descendants of Messalina, was attempting to 
bring her son into the family precisely for the 
purpose of giving it strength. And, sensible 
woman that she was, she could hardly have 
acted otherwise. She had seen the family of 
Augustus, once so prosperous, reduced to a 
state of exhaustion and virtually destroyed by 
the fatal discord between her mother and Ti- 
berius and the quarrels between her brothers, 
^he state had suffered greatly through the 
madness of Caligula and the reckless hatred 
of the first Agrippina, and the present empress, 
her daughter, who was not merely fond of her 
son, but endowed in addition with the gift of 
reflection, sought as far as possible to make 
amends for the evils which had unconsciously 
been wrought. The hopes of the future were 
henceforth to abide in Britannicus and in Nero. 
In Agrippina there reappeared the wisdom of 

294 



AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO 

her greatest predecessors, and the people were 
so well satisfied that they conferred upon her 
the very highest honor, such as in her time 
even Livia herself had not received. She was 
given the title Augusta; she was allowed to ride 
into the precincts of the Capitol in a gilded 
coach (carpentum) , though this was an honor 
which in old time had been conceded only to 
priests and to the images of the gods. This last 
descendant of Livia and Drusus, in whom the 
virtues of a venerated past seemed to reappear, 
was surrounded by a semi-religious adoration. 
This is an evidence of sincere and profound 
respect, for though the Romans often show- 
ered marks of human adulation upon their 
potentates, it was not often that they bestowed 
honors of so sacred a character. 

The unforeseen death of Claudius suddenly 
cut short the work which Agrippina had well 
under way. Claudius was sixty-four years old, 
and one night in the month of October of the 
year 54 he succumbed to some mysterious mal- 
ady after a supper of which, as usual, he had 
partaken inordinately. Tacitus pretends to 

295 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

know that Agrippina had secretly adminis- 
tered poison to Claudius in a plate of mush- 
rooms. During the night, however, fearing lest 
Claudius would survive, she had called Clau- 
dius's physician, Xenophon, who was a friend 
of hers. The latter, while pretending to induce 
vomiting, had painted his throat with a feather 
dipped in a deadly poison, and had killed him. 
This version is so strange and improbable that 
Tacitus himself does not dare affirm it, but 
says that "many believe" that it was in this 
manner that Claudius met his death. But if 
there are still people credulous enough to be- 
lieve that the head of a great state can be 
poisoned in the twinkling of an eye by a doctor 
who brushes his throat with a feather, it is 
more difficult to understand what grounds 
Agrippina could have had for poisoning her 
husband. According to Tacitus, it was because 
she was disturbed by the fact that Claudius had 
for some time shown that he preferred Britan- 
nicus to Nero; but even if the fact were true, as 
a motive it would be ridiculous. Augustus was 
much fonder of Germanicus than he was of 

296 



AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO 

Tiberius; and yet at his death the senate chose 
Tiberius, and not Germanicus, because at that 
moment the situation clearly called for the 
former as head of the empire. When Claudius 
died, Britannicus was thirteen and Nero seven- 
teen years old. They were both, therefore, 
mere lads, and it was most probable that if the 
imperial seat fell vacant, the senate would 
choose neither, since they were both too young 
and inexperienced. This is so true that other 
historians have supposed, on the contrary, that 
Agrippina had fallen out with some one of the 
more powerful freedmen of Claudius, and see- 
ing Claudius waver, had despatched him in 
order that she herself should not end like Mes- 
salina. But this hypothesis also is absurd. An 
empress was virtually invulnerable. Messalina 
had proved this, for she had committed every 
excess and abuse with impunity. Agrippina, 
protected as she was by the respect of all, in- 
vested with honors that gave her person a vir- 
tually sacred character, had nothing to fear 
either from the weak Claudius or from his 
powerful freedmen. 

297 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

This accusation of poisoning, therefore, 
seems to be of precisely the same sort as, and 
not a whit more serious than, all those other 
similar accusations which were brought against 
the members of the Augustan family. Clau- 
dius, who was already sixty-four, in all prob- 
ability died a sudden but natural death, and 
from the point of view of the interests of the 
house of Augustus, which Agrippina had 
strongly at heart, he died much too soon. It 
was a dangerous and difficult matter to ask the 
Roman senate to appoint one of these striplings 
commander of the armies and emperor, even 
though they were the only survivors of the 
race of Augustus. So true is this that Tacitus 
tells us that Agrippina kept the death of Clau- 
dius secret for many hours and pretended that 
the physicians were still struggling to save 
him, when in reality he was already dead, dam 
res firmando Neronis imperio componuntur 
(while matters were being arranged to assure 
the empire to Nero). Consequently, if every- 
thing had to be hurried through in confusion 
at the last moment, it is plain that Agrippina 

298 



AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO 

herself must have been taken by surprise by 
the illness and death of Claudius. She there- 
fore cannot be held responsible for having 
caused it. 

It is not, however, difficult to reconstruct the 
course of events. On the nights of the tv^elfth 
and thirteenth of October, soon after Claudius 
had been suddenly stricken dov^n by his vio- 
lent malady, the doctors announced to Agrip- 
pina that the emperor was lost. Agrippina 
immediately understood that since the family 
of Augustus could at that moment present no 
full-grown man as candidate for the imperial 
office, there was grave danger that the senate 
might refuse to confer the supreme power 
either upon Nero or Britannicus. The only 
means of avoiding this danger was to bring 
pressure to bear upon the senate through the 
pretorian cohorts, which were as friendly to 
the family of Augustus as the senate was hos- 
tile. She must present one of the two youths 
to the guards and have him acclaimed not head 
of the empire, but head of the armies. The 
senate would thereby be constrained to pro- 

299 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

claim him head of the empire, as they had 
done in the case of Claudius. 

But which one of the two youths was it best 
to choose, Claudius's son by blood or his son by 
adoption? Nero was chosen as the result of 
the unrighteous ambition of Agrippina, so Tac- 
itus says. It is very probable that Agrippina 
was more eager to see her own son at the head 
of the empire than to see Britannicus there; 
but this does not seem to have been the real 
reason of her choice, for it could not have been 
otherwise, even if Agrippina had detested Nero 
and had cherished Britannicus with a mater- 
nal affection. Nero was four years older than 
Britannicus, and therefore he had to be given 
the preference over the latter. It was a very 
bold move to propose that the senate make a 
youth of seventeen emperor; it would have 
been nothing less than folly to ask that they 
accept a thirteen-year-old lad as commander- 
in-chief of the imperial armies of Rome. 

Through the help of Seneca and Burrhus, 
the plan developed by Agrippina was carried 
out with rapidity and success. On the thir- 

300 




From a photograph 



Copyright by Alinari 



STATUE OF AGRIPPINA THE YOUNGER, IN THE 
CAPITOLINE MUSEUM, ROME 



AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO 

teenth of October, after matters had been 
arranged with the troops, the doors of the im- 
perial palace were thrown open at noon; Nero, 
accompanied by Burrhus, advanced to the 
cohort which was on guard. He was received 
with joyous welcome, placed in a litter, borne 
to the quarters of the pretorians, and acclaimed 
head of the army. The senate grudgingly con- 
firmed his election. There resulted in Rome a 
most extraordinary situation: a youth of sev- 
enteen, educated in the antique manner, and, 
though already married, still entirely under 
the tutelage of a strict mother, had been 
elevated to the highest position in the im- 
mense empire. He was ignorant of the luxury, 
pleasure, and elegance which were becom- 
ing general in the great families; outside of 
a lively disposition and docility toward his 
mother, he had up to this point shown no 
special quality, and no particular vice. Only 
one peculiarity had been noticed in him: he 
had studied with great zest music, painting, 
sculpture, and poetry, and had made himself 
proficient in these arts, which were considered 

303 



THE WOMEN OF THE CiESARS 

frivolous and useless for a Roman noble. On 
the contrary, he had neglected oratory, which 
was held a necessary art by an aristocracy like 
the Roman, whose duty it was to use speech at 
councils, in the tribunals, and in the senate, 
just as it used the sword on the fields of battle. 
But the majority believed that this was merely 
a passing caprice of youth. 

Agrippina, then, with the assistance of Seneca 
and Burrhus, had kept the highest office in the 
state in the family of Augustus, and she had 
done so by a bold move which had not been 
without its dangers. She was too intelligent 
not to foresee that a seventeen-year-old em- 
peror could have no authority, and that his 
position would expose him to all sorts of envy 
and intrigue, and to open as well as secret op- 
position. She succeeded in mitigating this evil 
and in parrying this danger by another very 
happy suggestion — the virtually complete res- 
toration of the old republican constitution. 
After the funeral of Claudius, Nero introduced 
himself to the senate, and in a polished and 

304 



AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO 

modest discourse, seemingly intended to excuse 
his youth, he declared that of all the powers 
exercised by his predecessors he wished to keep 
only the command of the armies. All other 
civil, judicial, and administrative functions he 
turned over to the senate, as in the times of the 
republic. 

This "restoration of the republic" was 
Agrippina's masterpiece, and marks the zenith 
of her power. It followed, as a result of her 
decision, that Nero, who was to go down to 
posterity as the most terrible of tyrants, was 
that one of all the Roman emperors who had 
the most limited power; and furthermore it 
was likewise the result of her activity that the 
constitution of the empire had never been so 
close to that of the ancient republic as under 
the government of Nero. Most historians, hal- 
lucinated by Tacitus, have not noticed this, and 
they have consequently not recognized that in 
carrying out this plan Agrippina is neither 
more nor less than the last continuator of the 
great political tradition founded by Augustus. 
In the minds of both iVugustus and Tiberius 

305 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

the empire was to be governed by the aristoc- 
racy. The emperor was merely the depositary 
of certain powers of the nobility conceded to 
him for reasons of state. If these reasons of 
state should disappear, the powers would natu- 
rally revert to the nobles. It was therefore 
expedient at this time to make the senate for- 
get, in the presence of a seventeen-year-old 
emperor, the pressure which had been brought 
to bear upon it by the cohorts, and to wipe out 
the rancor against the imperial power which 
was still dormant in the aristocracy. This res- 
toration was not, therefore, a sheer renuncia- 
tion of privileges and powers inherent in the 
sovereign authority, but an act of political 
sagacity planned by a woman whose know- 
ledge of the art of government had been re- 
ceived in the school of Augustus. 

The move was entirely successful. The illu- 
sion that the imperial authority was only a 
transitory expedient made necessary by the 
civil wars, and that it might one day be entirely 
abolished, was still deeply grounded in the 
Roman aristocracy. Every relaxation of au- 

306 




From the statue in the Miiseo Nazionale, Naples 

AGRIPPINA THE YOUNGER 



AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO 

thority was specially pleasing to the senatorial 
circles. The government of Nero therefore 
began under the most favorable auspices, with 
joyous hope in the general promise of concord. 
The disaffection which had been felt in the 
last six years of Claudius's government was 
changed into a general and confident opti- 
mism, which the first acts of the new govern- 
ment and the signs of the future seemed to 
justify. Agrippina continued to keep Nero 
subject to her authority, as she had done before 
the election: together with his two masters, 
Seneca and Burrhus, she suggested to him 
every word and deed. The senate resumed its 
ancient functions; and governed by Seneca, 
Burrhus, and Agrippina in conjunction with 
the senate, the empire seemed to be progressing 
wonderfully, and in the eyes of the senators 
the entire government was in a better way than 
it ever yet had been. 

But the situation soon changed. Agrippina, 

to be sure, had given her son a strictly Roman 

education, and had brought him up with a 

simplicity and rigor long since out of fashion; 

^' 309 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

and though she had early given him a wife, she 
continued to keep him subject to maternal 
authority. But, with all this, it is doubtful if 
there ever was a temperament which rebelled 
against this species of education as strongly 
as did Nero's. His taste for the arts of draw- 
ing and singing, the indifference which he had 
shown for the study of oratory from his child- 
hood, these were the seeds from which as time 
went on his raging exoticism was to be devel- 
oped through the use and abuse of power. His 
was one of those rioting, contrary, and undis- 
ciplined temperaments which feel that they 
must do precisely the opposite of what tradi- 
tion, education, and the general opinion of the 
society in which they live have prescribed as 
necessary and recognized as lawful. In the 
case of Nero the defects and the dangers in the 
ancient Roman education were to become 
apparent. 

The first of these dangers declared itself 
when Nero entered upon one of those early 
marriages of which we have spoken in the first 
of these studies. Agrippina had early arranged 

310 



AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO 

an alliance with a young lady who, because of 
her virtues, nobility of ancestry, and Roman 
education, might have become his worthy com- 
panion; but a year after his elevation to the 
imperial dignity, the eighteen-year-old youth 
made the acquaintance of a woman whose 
beauty inflamed his senses and imagination to 
the point of making him entirely forget Octa- 
via, whom he had married from a sense of 
duty and not for love. This person was Acte, 
a beautiful Asiatic freedwoman, and the inex- 
perienced, ardent youth, already given up to 
exotic fancies, became so enamoured thatheone 
day proposed to repudiate Octavia and to marry 
Acte. But a marriage between Nero and Acte 
was not possible. The Lex de maritandis ordi- 
nibus prohibited marriages between senators 
and freedwomen. It was therefore natural 
that Agrippina should have opposed it with all 
her strength. She, the great-granddaughter of 
Livia, the granddaughter of Drusus, the daugh- 
ter of Germanicus, educated in the strictest 
ideas of the old Roman aristocracy, could not 
permit her son to compromise the prestige of 

311 



THE WOMEN OF THE CiESARS 

the entire nobility in the eyes of the lower 
orders by so scandalous a mesalliance. But on 
this occasion the youth, carried away by his 
passion, resisted. If he did not actually repu- 
diate Octavia, he disregarded her, and began 
to live with Acte as if she were his wife. 
Agrippina insisted that he give up this scan- 
dalous relationship; but in vain. The mother 
and son disagreed, and very shortly after hav- 
ing resisted his mother in the case of Acte, 
Nero began to resist her on other occasions. 
With increasing energy he shook off maternal 
authority, which up to that time he had ac- 
cepted with docility. 

This, however, was a crisis which was sooner 
or later inevitable. Agrippina had certainly 
made the mistake of attempting to treat Nero 
the emperor too much as she had treated Nero 
the child; but that the crisis should have been 
reached in this manner as the result of a love- 
affair, and that it should have provoked a mis- 
understanding between the mother and son 
that was soon to degenerate into hatred, was 
most unfortunate. Agrippina, though she en- 

312 




From the bust in Rome 

THE EMPEROR NERO 



AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO 

joyed great prestige, had also many hidden 
enemies. Everybody knew that she repre- 
sented in the government the old aristocratic, 
conservative, and economical tendency of the 
Claudii, — of Tiberius and of Drusus, — that she 
looked askance upon the development of luxu- 
rious habits, the relaxation of morals, and the 
increase of public and private expenditures. 
They understood that she exerted all her influ- 
ence to prevent wastefulness, the malversation 
of public moneys, and in general all outlays 
for pleasures either in the state or the imperial 
family. Her virtues and her stand against 
Messalina had given her a great prestige, and 
the reverence which the emperor had shown 
for her had for a long time obliged her enemies 
to keep themselves hidden and to hold their 
peace. But this ceased to be the case after the 
incipient discord between her and Nero had 
allowed many to foresee the possibility of 
using Nero against her. In proportion as Nero 
became attached to Acte he drew away from 
his mother, and in proportion as he withdrew 
from his mother his capricious, fantastic, and 

315 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

rebellious temper was encouraged to show it- 
self in its true light. The party of the new 
nobility, with its modern and oriental tenden- 
cies, had for ten years been held in check by 
the preponderating influence of Agrippina. 
But gradually, as the exotic and anti-Roman 
inclinations of the emperor declared them- 
selves, this party again became bolder. The 
memories of the scandals of Caligula and Mes- 
salina were becoming effaced by time, the 
rather severe and economical government of 
Agrippina was showing signs of weakening, 
and all minds were beginning to entertain a 
vague desire for something new. 

The two parties which in the times of Augus- 
tus had rent Rome asunder were now being 
realined in the imperial house and in the sen- 
ate — the party of the old nobility, which haa 
Agrippina at its head, and the party of the 
modernizing nobility, which was gathering 
about the emperor and trying to claim him as 
its own. Tacitus clearly tells us that the older 
and more respectable families of the Roman 
nobility were with Agrippina; and even if he 

316 



AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO 

had neglected to tell us so, we might easily have 
guessed it. For a moment the old, old struggle 
which had been the cause of so many tragedies 
in the upper classes of Rome seemed once 
more ready to break forth. But even though 
Agrippina was the soul of the party of the old 
nobility, the party needed a man whom it 
could oppose to Nero as a possible and better 
candidate for the imperial dignity. 

Agrippina, like a true Roman matron of the 
old type, looked upon the family merely as an 
instrument of political power, and therefore 
subjected her personal affections to the public 
interest. She began to cast her eyes upon Bri- 
tannicus, the son of Messalina, who was now 
becoming a young man and who seemed to be 
more serious-minded than Nero. It was even 
muttered that she thought of giving her own 
son's place to the son of Messalina, when sud- 
denly, in 55, Britannicus died at a dinner at 
which Nero was present. Was he poisoned by 
Nero, as Tacitus says? Although there is no 
lack of obscurities and improbabilities in the 
account of Tacitus, this time the accusation, if 

317 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

it is not true, is at least much more probable 
than the other accusations of the same kind. 
It is certain that the report that Britannicus had 
been poisoned was soon current at Rome, and 
that it was believed; and the death of Britanni- 
cus was likewise a fatal blow to Agrippina and 
her party. Tacitus tells us that the death of 
Britannicus caused Agrippina great terror and 
unspeakable consternation, and it is not difQ- 
cult to divine the reasons. Nero now remained 
the last and only survivor of the family of 
Augustus, and it was therefore no longer pos- 
sible to bring any effective opposition to bear 
upon him by setting up some other member of 
the family who would be capable of governing. 
The new nobility, with its modern tendencies, 
now rapidly gained strength, and the influence 
of Agrippina declined proportionately. 

As a result of the lofty qualities of genius 
and character with which she had been en- 
dowed, Agrippina had been able to hold the 
balance of power in the state as long as she 
had succeeded in keeping the emperor under 
her influence. This had been true in the cases 

318 



AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO 

of both Claudius and Nero. After Nero escaped 
from her influence, or, rather, after he had 
turned against her, her prestige and her power 
rapidly diminished, and her party lost greatly 
in size and in power. Although personally the 
emperor was youthful and weak, the dignity 
of his office made him more powerful than all 
the members of his family, however energetic 
and intelligent they might be. At this period, 
furthermore, Nero was supported by an entire 
party which was daily increasing in strength 
and in numbers, for, as always happens in eras 
of prosperity and peace, the temper of the time 
was tending toward a milder, gentler, more 
liberal government, and consequently one 
which would be less authoritative and severe. 
Agrippina, however, was an energetic wo- 
man, not easily discouraged, and she continued 
the struggle. Consequently for two years 
longer, even in the midst of strife, intrigues, 
and suspicions, she preserved a considerable 
influence, and was able to check the progress 
of the government in its new direction. This 
was either because Nero, though no longer ex- 

319 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

actly obedient to his mother's will, was still too 
weak, too undecided, and too deeply involved 
in the ideas of his earlier education to attempt 
an open revolt against her, or it was because 
Seneca and Burrhus wisely sought to conciliate 
the ultra-conservative ideas of the mother with 
the newer tendencies of the son. 

The definitive break with his mother and 
with her political ideas, — that is, with the ideas 
which had been professed by her ancestors,— 
came in 58, when Nero forgot Acte for Poppaea 
Sabina. The latter belonged to one of those 
great Roman families into which the new spirit 
and the new customs had most deeply pene- 
trated. Rich, beautiful, avaricious of luxuries 
and pleasures, possessed of an unbridled per- 
sonal ambition, she had attracted Nero to her- 
self, and, in order to become empress, gave the 
uncertain youth the decisive impulse which 
was to transform the disciple of Agrippina and 
the grandson of Germanicus into the prodigal 
and dissolute emperor of history. She encour- 
aged in him his desire to please the populace, 
and certainly never checked his love for Greece 

320 



AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO 

and the Orient, which resulted finally in his 
mania of everywhere imitating the example of 
Asia and of taking up again, though to be sure 
less wildly, the policies of Caligula. Tacitus 
tells us that she continually reproved Nero for 
his simple customs, his inelegant manners, and 
his rude tastes. She held up to him, both as an 
example and as a reproach, the elegance and 
luxury of her husband, who was indeed one of 
the most refined and pompous members of the 
degenerate Roman nobility. Poppaea, in short, 
gave herself up to the task of reshaping the 
education of Nero and of destroying the results 
of Agrippina's patient labor. Nor was this all. 
She even became, with her restricted intelli- 
gence, his adviser in politics. She persuaded 
him that the policy of authority and economy 
which his mother had desired was rendering 
him unpopular, and she suggested the idea of 
a policy of liberality toward the people which 
would win him the affection of the masses. 
After he had fallen in love with Poppaea Sa- 
bina, Nero, who up to that time had shown no 
considerable initiative in affairs of state, elabo- 

321 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

rated and proposed to the senate many revolu- 
tionary projects for favoring the populace. He 
finally proposed that they abolish all the vecti- 
galia of the empire; that is, all indirect taxes, 
all tolls and duties of whatever sort. The 
measure would certainly have been most popu- 
lar, and there was much discussion about it in 
the senate; but the conservatives showed that 
the finances of the empire would be ruined and 
persuaded Nero not to insist. Nero, however, 
wished to bring about some reform which 
would help the masses, and he gave orders in 
an edict that the rates of all the vectigalia be 
published; that at Rome the pretor, and in the 
provinces the propretor and proconsul, should 
summarily decide all suits against the tax- 
farmers and that the soldiers should be exempt 
from these same vectigalia. 

Though some of these reforms were just, 
this new policy was also the cause of the final 
rupture with his mother. Agrippina and Nero, 
to all intents and purposes, no longer saw each 
other, and Nero, on the few visits which he 
was obliged to pay her in order to save appear- 

322 




, a drawing- by Andri^ Castaig-ne 

THE DEATH OF AGRIPPINA 



AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO 

ances, always arranged it so as never to be left 
alone in her presence. In this manner the in- 
fluence of Agrippina continued to decline, 
while the popularity of Nero steadily increased 
as the result of his youth, of these first reforms, 
and of the hopes to which his prodigality had 
given rise. The public, whose memory is al- 
ways brief, forgot what Agrippina had done 
and how she had brought back peace to the 
state, and began to expect all sorts of new 
benefits from Nero. Poppsea, encouraged by 
the increasing popularity of the emperor, in- 
sisted more boldly that Nero, in order to make 
her his wife, should divorce Octavia. 

But Agrippina was not the woman to yield 
thus easily, and she continued the struggle 
against her son, against his paramour, and 
against the growing coterie which was gather- 
ing about the emperor. She opposed particu- 
larly the repudiation of Octavia, which, being 
merely the result of a pure caprice, would have 
caused serious scandal in Rome. But Nero was 
even now hesitating and uncertain. He still 
had too clearly before him the memory of the 

325 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

long authority of his mother; he feared her too 
much to dare step forth in open and complete 
revolt. At last Poppsea understood that she 
could not become empress so long as the 
mother lived, and from that moment the doom 
of Agrippina was sealed. Poppaea was goaded 
on by all the new friends of Nero, who wished 
to destroy forever the influence of Agrippina, 
and by her words and deeds she finally brought 
him to the point where he decided to kill his 
mother. 

But to murder his mother was both an abom- 
inable and dangerous undertaking, for it 
meant killing the daughter of Germanicus — 
killing that woman whom the people regarded 
with a semi-religious veneration as a portent 
of fortune; for she was the daughter of a man 
whom only a premature death had prevented 
from becoming the head of the empire, and she 
had been the sister, the wife, and the mother of 
emperors. For this reason the manner of her 
taking-off had been long debated in order that 
it might remain secret; nor would Nero make 
his decision until a seemingly safe means had 

326 



AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO 

been discovered for bringing about the disap- 
pearance of Agrippina. 

It was the freedman Anicetus, the com- 
mander of the fleet, who, in the spring of 59, 
made the proposal when Nero was with his 
court at Raise, on the Ray of Naples. They 
were to construct a vessel which, as Tacitus 
says, should open artfully on one side. If Nero 
could induce his mother to embark upon that 
vessel, Anicetus would see to it that she and the 
secret of her murder would be buried in the 
depths of the sea. Nero gave his consent to this 
abominable plan. He pretended that he was 
anxious to become reconciled with his mother, 
and invited her to come from Antium, where 
she then was, to Raiae. He showed her all re- 
gard and every courtesy, and when Agrippina, 
reassured by the kindness of her son, set out 
on her return to Antium, Nero accompanied 
her to the fatal vessel and tenderly embraced 
her. It was a calm, starry night. Agrippina 
stood talking with one of her freedwomen 
about the repentance of her son and the recon- 
ciliation which had taken place, when, after 

327 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

the vessel had drawn some distance away from 
the shore, the plotters tried to carry out their 
infernal plan. What happened is not very 
clear. The seemingly picturesque description 
of Tacitus is in reality vague and confusing. 
It appears that the ship did not sink so rapidly 
as the plotters had hoped, and in the confusion 
which resulted on board, the emperor's mother, 
ready and resolute, succeeded in making her 
escape by casting herself into the sea and 
swimming away, while the hired assassins on 
the ship killed her freedwoman, mistaking her 
for Agrippina. 

In any case, it is certain that Agrippina ar- 
rived safely at one of her villas along the coast, 
with the help, it seems, of a vessel which she 
had encountered as she swam, and that she 
immediately sent one of her freedmen to ap- 
prise Nero of the danger from which she had 
escaped through the kindness of the gods and 
his good fortune! Agrippina had guessed the 
truth, but for this one time she gave up the 
struggle and sent her messenger, that it might 
be understood, without her saying so, that she 

328 



AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO 

forgot and pardoned. Indeed, what means 
were left her, a lonely woman, of coping with 
an emperor who dared raise his hand against 
his own mother? 

However, fear prevented Nero from under- 
standing. No sooner had he learned that Agrip- 
pina had escaped than he lost his head. In his 
imagination he saw her hastening to Rome and 
denouncing the horrible matricide to the sol- 
diers and the senate; and beside himself with 
terror, he sent for Seneca and Burrhus in order 
to take counsel with them. It is easy to imag- 
ine what the feelings of the two teachers of 
the youth must have been as they listened to 
the terrible story. Even they failed to under- 
stand that Agrippina recognized and declared 
herself conquered. They, too, feared that she 
would provoke the most frightful scandal 
which Rome had yet seen, and not knowing 
what advice to give, or rather seeing only a 
single way out, which was, however, too se- 
rious and horrible, they held their peace while 
Nero begged them to save him. At last Seneca, 
the humanitarian philosopher, turned to Bur- 
i« 329 



THE WOMEN OF THE C^SARS 

rhus and asked him what would happen if the 
pretorians should be ordered to kill Agrippina. 
Burrhus understood that Seneca, though he 
was the first to give the terrible advice, yet 
wished to leave to him the more serious respon- 
sibility of carrying it into execution; for Bur- 
rhus, as commander of the guards, would have 
had to give the order for the murder. He 
therefore hastened to say that the pretorians 
would never kill the daughter of Germanicus, 
and then added that if they really wished to do 
away with Agrippina, the best plan would be 
for Anicetus to carry out the work which he 
had begun. His advice was the same as Sen- 
eca's, but he turned over to a third person the 
very grave responsibility for its execution. He 
had, however, chosen this third person more 
wisely than Seneca, for Anicetus could not 
refuse. If Agrippina lived, it was he who ran 
the risk of becoming the scapegoat for all this 
bloody and horrible adventure. 

As a matter of fact, Anicetus accepted. The 
freedman whom Agrippina had sent to an- 
nounce her misfortune was imprisoned and 

330 



AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO 

put in chains, in order to convey the impres- 
sion that he had been captured carrying con- 
cealed weapons and in the act of making an 
attempt upon the emperor's life by the order of 
his mother. Anicetus then hastened to the villa 
of Agrippina and surrounded it with a body of 
sailors. He entered the house, and with two 
officers rushed into the room where Agrippina, 
reclining upon a couch, was talking with a ser- 
vant, and killed her. Tacitus tells us that when 
Agrippina saw one of the officers unsheathe his 
sword, she asked him to thrust her through the 
body which had borne her son. 

Thus died the last woman of the house of 
Augustus, and, with the exception of Livia, the 
most remarkable feminine figure in that fam- 
ily. She died like a soldier, on duty and at her 
post, bravely defending the social and political 
traditions of the Roman aristocracy and the 
time-honored principles of Romanism against 
the influx of those new forces of a later age 
which were seeking to orientalize the ancient 
Latin republic. She died for her family, for 
her caste, and for Rome, without even having 

331 



THE WOMEN OF THE C.ESARS 

the reward of being remembered with dutiful 
regard by posterity; for in this struggle she 
had sacrificed not merely her life, but even her 
honor and her fame. Such, furthermore, was 
the common destiny of all the members of this 
family, and if we except Livia and Augustus, 
the privileged pair who founded it, we are at a 
loss to know whether to call it the most fortu- 
nate or the most unhappy of all the families of 
the ancient world. It is impossible for the his- 
torian who understands this terrible drama, 
filled with so many catastrophes, not to feel a 
certain impression of horror at the vindictive 
ferocity that Rome showed to this house, 
which, in order to bring back Rome's peace 
and to preserve her empire, had been fated to 
exalt itself a few degrees above the ordinary 
level of the ancient aristocracy. Men and 
women, the young and the old, the knaves and 
the large-hearted, the sages and the fools of the 
family, alike, all without exception, were per- 
secuted and plotted against. And again, if we 
except the persons of the two founders, and 
those who, like Drusus and Germanicus, had 

332 



AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO 

the good fortune to die young, Rome deprived 
them all, deprived even Antonia, of either 
their life or their greatness or their honor, and 
not infrequently it robbed them of all these 
three together. Those who, like Tiberius and 
Agrippina, defended the ancient Roman tradi- 
tion, were hated, hounded, and defamed with 
a no less angry fury than Caligula and Nero, 
who sought to destroy it. No one of them, 
whatever his tendencies or intentions, suc- 
ceeded in making himself understood by his 
times or by posterity; it was their common fate 
to be misunderstood, and therefore horribly 
calumniated. The destiny of the women was 
even more tragic than that of the men, for the 
times demanded from them, as a compensation 
for the great honor of belonging to this privi- 
leged family, that they possess all the rarest 
and most difiQcult virtues. 

What was the cause of all this? we ask. How 
were so many catastrophes possible, and how 
could tradition have erred so grievously? It is 
almost a crime that posterity should virtually 
always have studied and pondered this im- 

333 



THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS 

mense tragedy of history on the basis of the 
crude and superficial falsification of it which 
Tacitus has given us. For few episodes in 
general history impress so powerfully upon 
the mind the fact that the progress of the world 
is one of the most tragic of its phenomena. 
Especially is such knowledge necessary to the 
favored generations of prosperous and easy 
times. He who has not lived in those years 
when an old world is disappearing and a new 
one making its way cannot realize the tragedy 
of life, for at such times the old is still suffi- 
ciently strong to resist the assaults of the new, 
and the latter, though growing, is not yet strong 
enough to annihilate that world on the ruins 
of which alone it will be able to prosper. Men 
are then called upon to solve insoluble prob- 
lems and to attempt enterprises which are both 
necessary and impossible. There is confusion 
everywhere, in the mind within and in the 
world without. Hate often separates those who 
ought to aid one another, since they are tend- 
ing toward the same goal, and sympathy binds 
men together who are forced to do battle with 

334 



AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO 

one another. At such times women generally 
suffer more than men, for every change which 
occurs in their situation seems more danger- 
ous, and it is right that it should be so. For 
woman is by nature the vestal of our species, 
and for that reason she must be more conser- 
vative, more circumspect, and more virtuous 
than man. There is no state or civilization 
which has comprehended the highest things in 
life which has not been forced to instil into its 
women rather than into its men the sense for 
all those virtues upon which depend the stabil- 
ity of the family and the future of the race. 
And for every era this is a question of life and 
death. In such periods when one world is dying 
and another coming to birth, all conceptions 
become confused, and all attempts bring forth 
bizarre results. He who wishes to preserve, 
often destroys, so that virtue seems vice, and 
vice seems virtue. Precisely for this reason it 
is more difficult for a woman than for a man 
to succeed in fulfilling her proper mission, for 
she is more exposed to the danger of losing her 
way and of missing her particular function; 

335 



THE WOMEN OF THE CiESARS 

and since she is more likely to fail in realizing 
her natural destiny, she is more likely to be 
doomed to a life of misfortune. 

Such was the fate of the family of Augustus, 
and such especially was the fate of its women. 
The strangers who visit Rome often go out on 
Sunday afternoons to listen to the excellent 
music that can be heard in a room which is 
situated in one of the little streets near the 
Piazza del Popolo and which used to be called 
the Corea. This hall was built over an ancient 
Roman ruin of circular form which any one 
can still see as he enters. That ruin is the en- 
trance to the tomb which Augustus built on the 
Flaminian Way for himself and his family. 
Nearly all of the personages whose story we 
have told were buried in that mausoleum. If 
any reader who has followed this history 
should one day find himself at Rome, listening 
to a concert in that old Corea, which has now 
been renamed after the Emperor Augustus, let 
him give a thought to those victims of a ter- 
rible story of long ago, and may he remember 
that here, where at the beginning of the twen- 

336 



AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO 

tieth century he listens to the flow of rivers of 
sweet sound — here only, twenty centuries ago, 
could the members of the family of Augustus 
find refuge from their tragic fate, and after so 
much greatness, resolved to dust and ashes, 
rest at last in peace. 



337 



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